The smoke is good but some sunshine would be better. To do something right would be better. But that’s not possible is it? I didn’t think so. I cry a little too much I think. Every time I spend more than a minute away from people, I go to take a piss and im crying. Go fucking figure. I like to think that im strong, and maybe I am. But I plant trees with sorrow, and I don’t want to be that woman. I don’t want to be the woman carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. I want to make people laugh. But I’ve lost that for now and it hurts. Not the pretty one, nor the first pick, nor the most enchanting. Few things take it all away, but then everything does. The trees do. And he pipes and the drums, and love. But I have lost my love somewhere amongst all the hurt, and it doesn’t want to creep out from its hiding place. I am tired of playing hide and seek with my own heart. The scary thing is that its right there within me all along and I still can’t find it. And the years go by so quick here. And im always alone and really terrified. Absolutely terrified.

So I look in the faces I see and I see the same fear. I hurt my mother and it makes her cry, but she hurts herself too, so I cant tell which tears I have caused and which she chose herself. In a mad attempt not to be held accountable I ignore all the tears, if I don’t claim them or see them I am absolved. I think a lot of people do that. I know she does, so I feel a little better until I realize how sad it is that this is the way of things naturally. Fear, pain and denial. In the end nobody is held accountable because it is all a chain reaction started in the beginning. We cant help how we feel because the joystick is in many hands. The big remote control was programmed back when we were walking on our knuckles. So I can’t be held accountable right?

I see it in other faces too. The faces of people I don’t know. I see women on the street wondering how the hell they can beat their sons for not having a daddy there to tell them not to do what they just did. Kids on the street afraid to go home like me. College people on the streets full of guilt and fear over all their fresh "crimes" questioning the validity of their possible nemeses. Scared to death of the thought that there is no god to give the warning on right or wrong. Maybe its just a silent disease coursing through the body no matter the black or white of the act. The old man whose best stories took place sixty years ago, and there hasn’t been a good one since 1957. He has been oblivious to the changing world, and every now and again when he does snap awake he is made dizzy by the complexities of passing time. Should it be this serious?

I see it in my friends. They want to be loved. They want someone outside of family to tell them it will all be alright so that they know they are wanted just as much but with more agreeable bull shit. They want to have happy times, they want alcohol and game and a tribe to fight the day with. They want a toy to spend the night with. They all need to be spooned. At least someday they will learn that all they need do is ask.