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She could fill the entire house with crap, and I was expected to keep my mouth shut.

That’s how it was back in the days of evil love. Junk mail would be piled to the moon. Boxes filled the floors to the point one would have to carefully dance around them to avoid tripping. Laundry would be stacked high on a chair waiting to be folded or hung up. And that was our life. Piles of things everywhere. I had no space of my own. Everything was hers. If I wanted to enjoy something, anything… It was postponed indefinitely. My feelings, thoughts, desires, wishes, goals, and dreams were all crushed down into a coffee can and shut away in a dark corner of a closet. I was never allowed to be human, and it felt like it. It was suffocating and painful to the head and guts.

I’m worn out from worry. I worry about everything, every speck of dust. And here we go with the storm countdown again. 50 minutes until Armageddon. Rooftops torn open. Watermelon-size hail. 612 mph winds. Torrential rain that will lead to catastrophic flooding. Power outages that will last for weeks. Trees falling onto houses. People crushed in their beds. Lives ripped apart! You will lose everything!!

The weather people are so very over dramatic. And it makes me worry.

But then I remember letting go of swim trunks at Laguna Beach. Where the sand is made of silver switches. And the sandwiches are made with golden bread. I remember hanging there in my green Ocean Pacific tee. That’s when I had a hard body, muscles. I was lean and firm. And I stood on a rock above the sea and the music poured out of the cantina, the waves were crashing, the California sun was beaming like an eye from Oz. I put on shades to be cool. Then the long, murderous crawl back to the basin as the sounds swam to the sky.

To an empty apartment. A refrigerator in the living room. No oven. Hot plate. No bedroom. Couch. Palm trees outside. People looking in my windows. Bad bottle dreams and a typewriter on a table. Hot electric love among the natives. No wishing stars, only the dome that traps all the light pollution. Police helicopters in the sky. Their beams searching, seeking, never surrendering. They caught me nude at the curtains. One has to duck from the light before they laugh like the Joker.

The world wishes us well but how well can we be when the world dishes out depravity. Here I am what seems like 400 years later from anything else I have ever known. I sit in a dark room with the things in my head. The news is obscene. The rampaging stupidity now swarming the globe. And it makes me worry. I don’t understand the blind acceptance of utter buffoonery. I want to shake people until the rocks fall out of their heads. And then these godly claims. They kneel upon dead boxes and pray for love but practice hate. And then they stand and applaud the butchering of a once great nation.

I want to be on a high mountain in Colorado. I just want peace and quiet. I want to look out and see the refuge. I want to taste the air and swallow forgiveness. I want to see the armies of rocks and the soldiers of trees. I want to hear the sound of a mountain stream and smell the void of people. I just want to breathe.

Then I’m in the grocery store and the aisles are clogged with people. I can’t get to what I want. Ever. There’s always somebody in the way. I need space to… Breathe. I can’t get it. I hate it. I need to fill my cart with expensive food that wasn’t going to be expensive anymore. Orange lies all the time. It’s all congregated chaos. Two cashiers work the lanes. Two more stand by the self-checkouts on either end staring into space while the ding-a-lings try to do their jobs. It’s a nuthouse, man. I’m getting hungry. The eyes blink. The lights go out. The storm of evil love has crushed us, but not forever.

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