A Cooler Season

by Jason John Bartholomew

I’m not sure we ever said anything to each other that was understood with the meaning we intended to convey, yet always a fevered contest of tug of war was being waged with such deplorable sportsmanship and heat, we must have thought something was at stake. Our beginning was a cracking in the earth’s crust; fissures are almost always an omen. En guarde! A tournament commenced merely to run its course I suppose. Fevers are like that; they must run their course. So it was touch and go for awhile and then it just wasn’t; then, it was just gone. Cooler ambitions prevailed is a nice way of not saying we failed.

But the nights are starting to get cooler and in the fragile hours, cold even. Small current of drafts thread then into now, finding a way in around old fittings. It isn’t hard. We try in our haphazard way, but we can’t ever really get all the holes and cracks and all those empty spaces between things properly caulked and plasticized and boarded up snug and sealed for good. Such a small and improbable nuisance, such gentle, not even blowing, wafting in, under, around; imperceptible almost, until I’m a shivering ball wadded up at the foot of the bed under the small comforter, teeth chattering as if still looking for the right words to say…to say something…something pressing and urgent and formless.

I think maybe everyone gets so caught up in choosing a superior philosophy of life and meticulously completing it’s workbook so as to demonstrate a Seriousness of Purpose greater than a Dilettante’s curiosity, they accidentally forget the point of living is to be alive. It isn’t chess or an Easter egg hunt.

I always say I am going to dye eggs some November just because, but I never do because it’s messy and not that magical really, and pre-meditated whimsy feels a lot like making a big strategic show of not playing chess.

I think I probably would have tried harder to play to win had I any real concept of the game and understood the rules a bit better. Why do we use the words “game” and “play” to describe such serious undertakings with so many important, hard to articulate things at stake?

I catch myself running my hand softly along the nape of my neck. I do that sometines. I think it allows me to remember how it feels to be touched in a gentle place that softens the voice, back when there was conversation. I use my voice so seldom it’s more likely to crack than get raised these days. The furnace click on but it is too late to chase away these cold current ghosts. They have found the unguarded places and seeped beneath the skin into my soul again. So I just lay here at the bottom of the bed listening to my teeth clacking, still trying to find the right vocabulary to give form to the impossibly important.

August 26, 2017

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jason john bartholomew

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Word storms, poetry, some flat out lies, contemplated long form culture commentary and flashbulb flare lightning fireflies. Behold, Lightbringer!

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