The tales of a fat piggy boy

Tell me again why you’re so upset.

Right now he’s left bleeding in an alley, dying of cancer or aids or whatever he’s contracted this time. His whole body is cold in a way he’s never felt before, he whispers to me, over the phone. His lungs aren’t doing what they’re supposed to and he swears he’d feel sick to his stomach if he could concentrate hard enough to feel pain.

He’s telling me now how his stomach is ripped a little bit and he can’t keep his teeth in his mouth. Likewise, it seems he can’t keep the words in his head. Thoughts pouring out like blood from a ruptured stomach. He’s talking now, blabbing really, about how he’s sorry. Every time, it seems, he’s always sorry.

This time it’s the selfishness. This time its how he couldn’t shut up about his problems. He’s telling me how he realizes now. But it’s too late. I’m only understanding every third word, because of the blood or bile or whatever he’s choking on this time. It’s not that I’m listening too intently. I’ve heard these same stories hundreds of times before.

Finally he gets to the good part. He’s crying now, hard and fast. He’s telling me it’s his fault, he deserves this. He tones down his hyperventilation, idling, waiting for me to disagree. When he hears only silence, he apologizes again and once more exhales the slow shallow exhale I know so well. silence.

He’s gone now. Lying alone, dead in an alley. Of a gash in his abdomen, or a concussion. I listen for another five minutes to the sound of him not breathing. I like him this way best.

God Only Knows.

People think its dangerous to live “on the edge.” Parents spend years conditioning their kids not to run across the road without looking both ways. Law makers invent crazy laws to protect the innocence and naivety of children, adolescents and adults alike. Too often however, it is not living on the edge that does us in.

Some times perfectly legal, acceptable things coerce us to leap over the edge all together, into the void. In these cases, the fall is only made worse by the knowledge that every event and sentiment driving us toward that lack of eternity was perfectly okay. Natural and justified by its own existence.

I can’t explain why sometimes doing the right thing creates problems. I can’t explain what the right thing is. God only knows.

Here’s to [insert name here].

I remember when I first met him. He was always so lively, jumping around and yelling names at things without names. He laughed like a maniac and cried like a maniac and in both instances he was fantastic. He could make you say anything or do anything with that smile of his.

Then he got hit by a car and died and I feel so alone I could cry.

there was this woman.

This woman was alone and she knew it. I know she knew it because though she was surrounded by people, she felt completely comfortable. She could laugh and dance and smile and wink in the presence of a mass of human beings. She didn’t feel like she had anything to prove, and so she didn’t.

She was never once lonely in all her life. She was not attached or bound by the company or even the approval of others. She was free of the looks one gives to an outsider because she was to far outside to see them. She created her own world out of recycled pieces of the wreckage society made from dreams and never looked back.

There is no need to say that society wanted her back. Firstly because it is obvious. No one can beat the destructive cycle of broken lives. No one can escape the horror of being one in seven billion perfectly identical, totally original human beings. Secondly, She will never return. Why dwell on the fact that we desperately need her in the way one desperately misses their beloved sister? It doesn’t bring back the sister.

I just want to go home.

Home is not a place where the walls shake with voices. Home is not a confining space with few windows and fewer choices. Home is a world that is open to the stars and the large ideas that accompany them. A house is not a home in the world I come from and home is not where I live.

I knew this girl.

Alone in her room on that pink chair that smelled funny, she sat curled up with her painted toes pressed against the arm. I can see her sitting there now, her head tilted back with a lazy smile hovering on her lips. I remember the way the light flowed through the window above that chair and fell onto her skin. It made it look like she radiated. That’s why she insisted the chair be placed there in the first place. She was funny like that. I’ll never forget the last time I saw her sitting there, one arm draped over the back of the chair, still loosely clutching the empty pill bottle.

It was a beautiful sight.

I remember when I was older.

Every thing was so good back when I was old. I understood so much and I had the strange ability to let every trouble roll off me like mud off a pig. I would wake up and feel the freedom of knowing the responsibilities of youth were behind me. I could walk in a park and not worry about people I knew seeing me; most had died off or moved away. I had no projects, homework, competitions, nothing that could distract me from the tiring job of watching the world turn round and the people turn crazy. My head was full of philosophical Ideas and I had begun to come to terms with my own mortality.

Now I feel the growing sensation of vitality. My eye sight is getting better and the ache in my back is fading. My muscles are growing and with them comes a sense of self importance that replaces my old wisdom and rationality. The world is growing at a much faster rate than I can keep up with, not that I have time to care with the activities that are suddenly filling my day. I’ve entered school again and I’m trampolining five days a week. I’m suddenly having trouble going any where with out taking an hour to make sure I look presentable. Boys are suddenly the center of my universe. I can’t help feeling that I’m going to be alive for ever.