Status Quo

Sleep crept over me like a slow tide; like tides tend to do, it promised to leave behind dreams of seashells and pebbles, ancient seaweed starved of sunlight and black pearls that somehow captured the moonlight.  I thought I heard breathing as I felt the water lap over my feet, and then my armored heart, and then my anxious butterfly eyelids; I thought I heard rescue ships blaring the alarum from their foghorns.  I knew it then, but I managed to forget; I convinced myself that it was for the best.  Nothing is for anything, or ever will be; prepositions are entirely removed from the realm of human causality.  Even so, as the octopi shoot their ink into my veins, as the angelfish circle my head like an ancient halo, as the kelp shrouds my rejuvenation, I may in fact spy the summer night between dreams.

I laughed quietly, rejoicing in the absurd.  A list grew, grows, has always grown; what we know slowly becomes what we knew, and there remains nothing on this planet that we’ve ever really known.  Some days and some nights (not all days and all nights) were meant to be spent alone.

Take it or leave it; still, and forever, it will never be yours; what we have or had are either memories or euphoric hallucinations brought on by necessity or Providence.  I make no apologies not cut from whole cloth; some things I regret, but there are no people that I regret.  Admitting that, things become better; in whatever way things ever were.  I have told lies, and I won’t lie and color them white; selfish things, awful things, but I accept them for they were; desperate attempts to sustain a negligible status quo, when there never has been nor ever will be a status quo.  Status quo; as if things could ever stop changing.

"Baby, I’ve been here before, I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor, You know, I used to live alone before I knew ya’, I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch, and love is not a victory march, It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah…"

I know what it is to sleep alone; I know what is to sleep next to someone about whom you truly care.  That number increases with age, does it not?  It does; ironically enough, the bitter blood within these veins sweetens with age; we sweeten with age right?  Into chapters I’ve divided my life; a new chapter she is, and heaven sent.