An Intimate Following...

The title should've spoken for itself, but here I am, the chatter of fingers and plastic keys, oh how I miss that satisfaction of a typewriter. We have our moments, and we still do, but those times are just right, for the right person, and when I can take my time. I feel like the reporter, the man in the press, or rather, the man who has his head beneath the press as he eyes it for flaws, this machine can come down on me, it can take my head off, and what will I do now. Sure, the Paper will cover my lost with a fine sum to my family but like a giant check one receives for an anonymous contest where photographs of the winner are taken, it is useless, a piece of paper. We can never live a lie, my wife would just stop working. I would like to think my days would mark the last, that the apocalypse is marked by me leaving this planet. I am selfish. I am modest, I wanted to see the end with her, but now I'm just here, headless with a today's paper in my hand. I used to write for her, this is what I get. I used to be there for her, this is what I got. And now that I am gone my spirit doesn't float above my body, I don't see that world I once lived in. All I see is a black, not a blank, but a black to my new vision adjusting to nothing. I want to carve our names into the nothing, say we were here even though you aren't here with me. I thought by me doing so you were here, maybe you will find your way here, and we'll leave the kids to our neighbors until you find a way to bring me back. You hated my job, but you supported me, I should've listened to you. You tell me to shut up, to be silent and to just come back. You are looking right at me. You don't move, your eyes have these dots, little dark brown dots that orbit your iris. I wanted to be reborn into one of them, maybe all of them, I was a selfish man. Our kids would grow up, without us, and they will be fine, we had good neighbors, we lived in a good neighborhood. Our oldest son would be a writer too, he'll start writing for his girlfriends and then he'll write novels. He'll be a natural, we'll cheer for him, you'll forget you were supposed to take me back as you watch from overhead at our children's progress. We were so close to never seeing this but we aren't apart of their lives anymore, they had forgotten about us. We are strangers now, floating just above their heads, watching everything, we turn our eyes when they are doing bad things, or natural things that are bad to look at, they are, afterall, our kids, we respect them. And when we grow tired of this life we return to our old lives. We awake on a bed that was our own in the past life, we haven't had kids yet, and we aren't married. We are young again, but we feel old, knowing what is around the bend because we had just lived it. And what can be followed when it has already has happened. We are at a fork in the road; to the left is our lives as we knew it, and right is the lives we tried to lived before the convenience of comfort filled our bellies. And so the rest of our lives comes down to a decision we had before us. We know of the consequences for one of them, but the unknown holds its adventure to us. We decide to stay with each other, knowing that our lives will play out the same, and we leave the mystery, the unknown to find itself. I wanted to live my life following you as you follow me, and we follow each other, down the road, with our children as we follow them again, and hold them with our hands, no longer looking from above as the day repeats itself. And to live it all over again...to see, to feel, and to touch again, it feels even better, taking in everything with twice the appreciation. IN THE DAYS OF REPETITION, I follow you, you follow, and we'll be just fine, like dandy lions in the cracks of sidewalks, one after another, over and over.

*Sorry for burning your toast, Faye.