TIME JERK

Okay get this

Time slips

Tangible

A crack in my landscape

The backyard, right where the grass meets the trees

I stand

And it just opens up

It skips, time does

Like a scratched CD, a song or voice repeating itself

Over and over in a smoker’s voice

But the slip is silent

No door

Just transparency all around me

So I walk through

You got it

I walk through

And I am stretched out on the couch

Right shoulder balancing the phone

Watching the TV on mute

The old show “Love Connection”

Funny when muted

Because the couples lick their lips

Before talking

And kind of twitch or toss their hair

Over their shoulder

And blink, or shudder, moving

Their bodies in suggestive ways

That wouldn’t be noticed with the sound on

Talking to my best friend

I call him Trosclair

He calls me Clothilde

Old Cajun French names

Our pact is that  

He will lose weight and I will quit smoking

He keeps me from trying to kill myself

Talking in a smooth voice, soft for a man

But not too pansy

Keeps me seeing the big stuff

Not focused on the little things like why

I am not good enough

Or pretty enough, or smart enough

We just watch it in silence laughing and making remarks

Time Slips

It jerks me back

I am at the computer

Sitting on a chair

We are this age now, much older

He says “Hello, How are you?”

I reply, “Good, and you?”

Twenty Years

Hey says back to me,

“Jesus is my rock,

About 4 years ago I gave my life to Christ

And it hasn't been the same.

I couldn't imagine my life w/o Him.”

What a Jerk

That was, not a slip, or skip

But a big jerk

Into reality, and yet not real

My two years being a best friend to him

Gone

I was erased

I wasn’t a person

And He wasn’t there for me

Keeping my feet on the ground, not

Pulling away at the weeds of my negativity

Did you get that?

“Jesus, huh?,” I said back.

I like him too.