Message Not Delivered

Each night brings another chance to make it all right. Sing songs of long walks and a caroling princess in white. Sightings of smiles are rare these days. That’s what makes this so nice. I can sense it rising in my chest again. This time is like walking in stride instead of feeling faint with every step. Flood waters loom they threaten to pull us all under. Is it wrong to end a sentence with a preposition? When I hear “Moe” I think I hear “Low.” Are my ears ringing again? White-cross-wearing lovelorn ghosts travel great lengths to big snow. A globe spins on its axis. Message not delivered. You told me you loved me, you told me you loved me, what am I thinking? This over-analysis will be neglected come morning. I’m waiting for the tower to go up, for the power to come back. It’s so dark and desolate in this place, alone with the sounds of a buzzing cathode ray tube. Lipstick stains and cat-scratched cheeks. How did I remain on my feet? With each passing moment I moved at one beat-per-minute slower. A grueling comedown to a crawl. Dance and spin tricks with those invisible hips. You are barely there with your mop of hair and I’ve got nothing to do but care for you forever. I said if you were here then I would listen to your chest beating. Lub-dub, lub-dub, over and over and over and over and over again. Like the steady pounding of rain on the roof above me, I’m breathing in unison with you. Your oblique eyes are guilty of arson. My skin is crawling with four-alarm fires and you’re off with a hairdryer blowing your brains out again. Kings and queens send love to friends. On Friday mornings we arise and go our separate ways. On Saturdays we stay in bed all day smoking twists and sharing kisses, it’s not even real and yet I miss it. I saw you the other night, I could’ve sworn you were there in that light. Your postmodern thought is a centerpiece at dinnertime conversations. We access the regions of your mind that are dust-covered, cobwebbed, and pleading for attention. I hope that I prod at your abandoned parts. I want to bring life to the death of malaise. It’s so insanely macabre how you dangle yourself before me like bait on a line, a hook in my cheek that keeps me up week after week. You are this pain in my gums, in my teeth, the entire left side of my face. I’ve got pepper spray for protection from heroines. I’ve got a problem spelling words that I’m not sure how to begin again. Let’s change this from last evening and start something better. Let’s cut our losses and move together. But I digress, I do not know your address. There is a pest that’s thwarting our most recent attempts to communicate. Message not delivered. You are awaiting my reply. I cannot find a way to make these words fly across the miles that tear us apart like a scab from a wound. Message not delivered. I’m growing frustrated with the mess. Boring pictures flash before my eyes, my attention has been lost and my thought process stalled. It’s a car on the side of the road that’s been left there for some tow truck to cart away. Message not delivered. A gaping creek where we swim, where we’re free; a tire on a rope swings from a tree branch, here we are one in the country in the tall grass in the deepest part of the woods. Let’s get away. Message not delivered. It’s been forty minutes and I’m still so deeply stuck in this viscous muck from which I cannot extricate myself. Message not delivered.