Tuesday, April 7, 2009

ENDINGS by Billy Herman

Endings matter but I don’t know how much. Is a fake happy ending worth more than a humiliating one? And how long do you hold on to the memory of how a big nothing ended? Or was it more than that? How long do you live in an ending?


It’s like oh man that hurt. I think I’m just going to think about that for a while. Then I see decades going by and I’m still thinking about how that thing ended. And it’s not really a happy thought.


Maybe I can change the focus to what happened. I was offered a shot at love and I blew it. I rejected her or she rejected me. But in between wasn’t there some kind of tenderness? Wasn’t there some kind of yearning for a dream to come true?


She had a husband and four children. She took five hits of LSD years ago because she thought she would see God. But so what? I loved her. I steered us away from an affair until it became too late. Now it is too late and thinking about the sweet feelings between us only makes me sad. Something happened with her marriage and with her sanity. She called me a long time ago declaring she wasn’t going to play any flirting games with me anymore. She didn’t know that in between I had completely broken down and would need years of mending.


There was one ending at a bus depot but it was so long ago I don’t care about it anymore. She wasn’t that great. For years she blazed as the big great one, but who says?


Wasn’t there some kind of tenderness? Wasn’t there some kind of yearning for a dream to come true?


I have lost you in space and time. You who I liked, maybe loved I have lost. It seems so devastating. Liked, maybe loved? I was crazy about you. Or maybe I just thought you were hot. I’m not an idiot. I don’t have to act confused.


Alyssa as a beautiful woman inspired all kinds of fantasy, but she did not like me. And that would be all there is to it if I didn’t keep hanging on. I became addicted to the dream. Yeah, we had some kind of delightful parting. A parting in which I was informed that I was not enough of a man for her. But you know how women are when they are telling you that. She’s giving you some kind of fantastic punishment. She’s lying about you. You have to escape from her lies.


Wasn’t there some kind of tenderness? Wasn’t there some kind of yearning for a dream to come true? I have lost you in time and space. With my arms around her or at some old bus depot isn’t it all the same kind of thing? It’s some kind of lie about me. It’s some kind of disgrace and worthlessness. What man can live that way?


It’s a January snowstorm. I have lost some women in time and space and I feel like I can’t get over it, but I know I can.