Being careful not to touch too much, it neatly lies in line and order. Ready as I’ll ever be. Perhaps you’ll note the efforts made.

I wonder if you’ll see me first, if you’ll be in that army-green jacket, boots and shorts… and instantly I’m lost to thoughts of smooth legs and pressing hips, of kisses on your smiling lips, that I may well be the luckiest guy, and intend the chance to not be wasted, turning on the charm and chatter, begging you to look at me in that way so I know it’s okay to draw my hand, course it through the narrows, and wrap about your waist. Begin to taste the sharp inhales, anticipating a clumsy rush and mindful pause, to take it in.

To us, we move as if in water, slowly pushing through the deep, but to all others it must look like fire, twisting into knotted towers, sparking at the edges, burning at both ends.

It’s worse because it’s summer, bare legs at every turn, pale, bronzed, or chocolate skin, flaunting the fruits of their labor, begging you to adore the deft shadow where lean muscles define the line of sight, and draw your eyes ever deeper –

not wanting to be a creep, you turn, and look to your woman, the one you used to call your lover. She’s busy, focused, then unfocused, and agitated, you try to console her, you try to care for her, but you’re fighting the rising feeling in your chest, building like an inappropriate laugh, bursting with it.

Across the street, across the room, climbing in and out of cars, their nakedness mocks you.

You, a handsome man with grand ideas, with steady pay, with artful hands, so you force yourself to remember when you were single, and how little you were able to capitalize then either. But boy, it was fun to try.

I worry about the journal, of what it may unearth in me, of what it may encourage, feeding into self-delusion or fantasy; an insidious creep of personality that might as well go fuck itself for all its lack of insight.

Though insight it might, a different plight that I can’t (nor shall not) bear; it gobbles up my words and whims, and shits out all my care.

Congratulations. You know yourself. And what a crock of fucking wealth.

I’m on the cusp of freedom, but it’s one left-turn from losing faith, falling hard for hopelessness, like young, obsessive love, wasting in the waters, wallowing while grinning, a drunk slur melting my expression, revelling in ruminance.

This pity too is one deep breath from the imminent escape, the blatant understanding that there’s no such thing as fate, unless we take the concept to be nothing in itself, the story you have written, given to your younger self, impossibly told back to you, before you had begun, and begin you must, it waits for none, it has begun, it has begun.

I’m grateful for piano; the cryptic way it plays through me the truths I knew I knew, and sings me both awake, asleep, aware, and unaware that every key I key is key to naming my despair.