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James the Second
Just a man, everybody says Just find you one and you’ll be all right. See, in the grand little town scheme all right = all married oh boy. I went to college to see ‘the world’ twenty miles from my front door wow, the tour was short. The high school boy wrung me out The college fling left me to dry and I withered along with my single, sexless friends. Just a man, everybody says. Not a necessity. You’ve got Plenty of time! I kissed someone who was not mine I mended a fence, I burned a bridge all in the name of constructing a future and wait was the weight on me. Just a man, everybody says. He’ll show up. I nearly settled down if he had settled for someone he did not love but our planets never quite lined up so I went back to equals one. Just a man, mother shrugs, no big deal. There are Others. Verge of graduating no shimmering speck horizons, no cash in the bank but I drifted along and made bad choices and the good ones never seemed big enough. Just a man, everybody says. You’ve got plenty to choose from. Till I sat in a dirty truck in a hot parking lot and talked about childhood with a man who had grease on his arms whose hands shook like a criminal and gave up my future to an invisible Plan. Just a man, everybody says. Not worth trusting; stick with God. So now here I am happiness on me like a strange new perfume a rocking chair in the kitchen and an almost husband in the bedroom and I feel so grateful that somebody’d call me pathetic if it didn’t occur to me that this whole thing is a miracle. Nobody sees how big a deal it is. They shrug. Yeah. Just a man, everybody says. But I know -- Better. previous homepage |
