Everyone is Dead
But I'm here with a kite in the sky
The thing about city living is you’re all living together even when you’re not. When they run the printer upstairs it’s your printer, and when they’re fucking you’re fucking.
Dad asked me if I remembered Ray Brimhall from the days when I ran the old dirt road and stayed friendly with his kid, Zach, around my age. Sometimes we went walking or carried toy guns. Be honest, I don’t remember too much.
Then I got older, moved away from home, and read that he’d called his dad to the coast to help unstuck his car then shot him five or ten times. Maybe more. It’s hard to know the motivations for these things.
He always was kind of strange. Rode his bike to Mexico then rode it back to Oregon. He did that a few times cause he was restless. A lure spinning in the South Umpqua for a big fish.
Hey, come on down to the bar. Tonight it’s filled with commas, no periods in sight. Play a buck or two in the jukebox. We’ll shoot some darts, drink shots, nurse beers like medicine, and get well from this or that.
It’ll be good. Like priests on Sunday or accomplishment before it goes rotten tomato.
My daughter called and I watched it go to voicemail like bad lettuce or leaves at the end of fall. Empty typewriters don’t write themselves, they echo like unvisited caves.
Today is the day when people have already died. They are fossils. Gravel. Oil. Mud. Epitaphs.
Angels made into pretty cursive.
Today, I was going to the bar but had to mow my lawn.
There is a story in the shoes I wear to the bar. There are stories in the boots I remove when I’m ready to sleep. I upend my boots and sand trickles out. Memory is this way. Always a little more.
I hate feeling you, but I feel you closer than lovers, closer than sex, closer than partners. You are closer to me than any of the people left here.
Happy birthday. Happy birthday since 2010. Merry Christmas since 2010. All these christin’ holidays since 2010. Every tree has broken and fallen on its side. I have moved too many times to remember details.
I cut all the shrubs and cracked a beer and went hiking in the mountains. It rained.
I pretended the drinks were for you.
Maybe you want to know what I’ve done this weekend. I bought a rug. I set a lamp and mowed my lawn. I ran a few miles and none of them solved pain.
The windows are open and the glass is thin. Some people hear cars and ambulances and sirens. I hear your voice. It’s soft, carried on the silent back of a desert mule with persistent resignation.
I’m sorry I haven’t done more with this time.
I throw yarn to kites in clouds that never remember my name. I jump the moment their mouths open like an eager lover.
My porch light is on. All night it’s on.
Hey, I’m Roman. I’m working on my debut novel, 20xx, a work in magical realism. I write on Substack.
For my brothers whom are too many to name. But a few: MAJ Andy Byers, 1LT Rob Collins, 1LT Sal Corma, 1LT Chris Goeke, CPT Tony Fusco, CPT Jim Gallagher, MAJ Levi Hazlett, CPT Anne (Rockeman) Montgomery, Chris Hammett, Alex Harmon, Russell Raines, Rob Ross, Sean Flachs, Joe Kim, and Josh Young. USMA, NO MISSION TOO GREAT, 2008. Be thou at peace.
Everyone is dead. Except you make them immortal in ink. You are on my heart, Roman.
this has a nice raw, haunting honesty that echoes long after reading, very good!