My Quiet Friend

Push against them, the whole tide of opposition, for they come with sharpened teeth and they know only killing. It hurts to feel their pestilence inside me, to know they are coursing inside this deflated body, this boy that once rode his bike and believed in Santa Claus and dreamed he'd grow up to be a spy like J. Bond. Now I clutch, I grab, I cringe, I crave and I claw and I have totally lost control of everything that I thought I had grasped on my escape from my sinking boat. These accusatory eyelids define me quietly in the night and I blink in rememberance daily the whiplashes of shame and regret and hindsight they broadcast to me in the coffee vapors of my artifical-light mornings. And you look at me and try not to shake your head because of the things you see that equal what you have already learned in your miranda rights life. And I shake my head with resignation for you, because you are right and I am lost, so I shift to scratching at the two dollars in my pocket, and no longer register the headache because of the ache of the crushing, dirty presence of the tide inside. These days, despite the outpouring of care, I feel the dying inside all too often. And it tastes like metal, or beer, or contaminated smoke, or bitter-caustic "what if?". I stare at the sky; hope, my quiet friend...