Maybe in Parenthesis
and other confessions
“See you next year,” he said in late December, cashing me out. “Maybe not,” I blurted. (Just hoping I wouldn’t be here.) He chuckled, maybe with a trace of unease. Or maybe not. Maybe is a word I use for everything ’cause nothing I say sounds reasonable to me
It’s nothing against that guy. Just got tired of feeling jealous, of wishing I were him ’cause he’s got a farm and is younger than me and good looking, and although I know nothing about his life other than he’s got an organic produce stand at the farmers market that I frequent more frequently than I used to since supermarket prices for produce have gone up so much they’ve caught up with his outrageous prices, he never once lectured me (unlike the entitled scumbags deciding my cost-of-living crapola) about the cold hard facts of inflation or some other self-righteous sales pitch sponsored by our monopoly extortion economy
If it weren’t for the rent-taxes-credit racket I simmer in, I’d be happy to shell out half the contents of my wallet for half a pint of his strawberries and savor not chomping on one of the most heavily sprayed crops (as part of our biowarfare on nature) on store shelves
The maybe of it all is why I wish I were him, lived on a farm, grew my own strawberries (lettuce and alliums too) instead of being the fucking loser that I am, gawking everyday at the expanse of impenetrable urban concrete staring back at me while it smothers the earth with no cops around to make it stop, only men with chainsaws cutting down the few remaining trees
Back indoors, I pick up psychobabble from random youtube clips and get to see a popular media hack (good looking and younger than me) ramble on about how folks who hate themselves hate the rest of us, too—better we should stay the hell away… I buy into his thesis hook line and sinker and hop directly to self-recrimination, knowing I’ve been hating myself like forever, knowing I’ve been spreading this hatred around wherever, knowing it would be pointless to point out how I know I’m a fuckup of a person, how I don’t wanna be here anymore, how I can’t hope for anyone to maybe [an undecided verb] me
Maybe is my most trusted word when it applies to the world beyond my sphere of hatred. Everything and everybody around me is a blur, I never know what’s real
Where are you, babe — will you ever tell me where you’ve gone? I know it’s quiet where you’re at — no power tools, wailing sirens, trucks careening down the street, cacophony of garbled music, leaf blowers, jackhammers — but that’s all I know. You were the only being in my prickly and cramped existence who loved me regardless, who shrugged off the toxic pheromones I sprayed around (as part of my warfare on myself), who said, “You’re a human,” when I tried to walk back my angry words, my endless rants about how things are not how they should be, my intractable misery
And then you left. You could no longer wait for me to be happy, to allow for the odd smile. You left, and there’s nothing to be done about that. I’ve made a pact with myself to concede in language, written or uttered, that you no longer walk the earth in your warm and touchable body, but I’m still holding out for you to come back
