Fight Me
I like the idea of God only because I think it would be fun to fight them. My favorite fights are the ones I lose. I laugh deep and hard through blood and broken ribs. As a bit of an over-performer, I cherish when I get to be the disappointment. I won’t set it up—I don’t have to. The world is wild enough.
I like the crumbling countenance on their faces as the crowd around me sees a thing they mistook for unshakable, broken on the floor. I like when they start to question the validity of things like heroes and strength.
I have no problem losing a fight as long as it’s more devastating for someone else. It is. I am a solution or a problem. I do not tarry in the middle there. Either we’re fucking or fighting, friends or enemies. Neutral is no good for me. Neutral can’t be trusted.
There’s a gun in the glovebox and it’s for sure not mine. Neither is the bag of what I assume is either coke or a Marine’s laundry soap. They like to carry it in little baggies. Sometimes. Two did. Whatever. What year is it? Did we win the war yet?
It’s hot out and the sun refuses to set; like in the old summer days when we could play backyard baseball clear until 10 pm. Mosquitos. Mean, winged fencing foils. You can’t feel them bite. The pain comes from them pulling out. The pain comes too late. You scratch it until a dime-sized sore develops and cover it in aloe and piss and iodine and whatever else you read about online. [Dampen a clean cotton bud or gause in ammonia and dab the wound. Let it dry uncovered. Don’t scratch it. ]
I know the Earth isn’t hollow, but I hear a hollowness as I thud to the ground. The dirt here is sand and the sand here is hot, but I need to sit down. Not a desert but I brought Camels. I flick the flint, light my smoke, lean back—elbows into the sand—and stare at the clouds for the first time in twenty years.
I wonder if this moment is a memory. If I am on my deathbed already and this is just some flashback. I am old and elsewhere and falling apart. A nurse closes a door so they don’t have to hear my groans—and I’m 27 on a hill in a forest watching the whitest clouds I’ve ever seen drag themselves across the bluest sky I have ever seen.
When did I go crazy?
For the bitching I may do about my youth, I was spoiled whenever I could be. I was a good kid, but an odd kid, but not much more than that.
Oh. It’s related. I’m twenty-five or twenty-six. Someone taps me on my leg as we walk and says, “Look, C-A-P’s!” pointing down the road to the transient tents. Among the soldiers are very young, cadet-age boys. I ask around and the answers come in variations of: don’t ask, don’t know, or they fuck’em.
It could be just as much urban legend as an artifact of the end of the Bush Era of the Global Wars on Terror. They’re not here often – just the once in fact – just passing through to ______.
That got me though, just the Schrodinger shrugs as people on base not only suggest this madness to me but that I just ignore it.
I’m 9 and I’m being kicked in the ribs on the playground. Crying, I tell the “lunch lady” I’m getting beat up.
“Just let them finish, sweetie. If you fight back it’ll only be worse.”
I’m 30 and given a bottle of pills and a sleeve of bracelets with a suicide prevention hotline on it.
I’m 32 and run out of bracelets.
I’m here, with you now, and I get it. These poor fucking kids. What chance did they have? Fight me. Fight for me. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Figh them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them. Fight for them.
Fight.
