Go on do what you have to do

In this perverse place.

In this, the end times.

As I gaze out across the sea of tears in which the wreckage of broken dreams sit half submerged and rotting, bashed up against the rocks of hope in a storm of your making, as the last grain of sand falls and my lease expires—yes I’m sure, I see my signature there in warm Jello—I get up as if to go but I can’t feel my spine so for the moment I stay. You hand me a beer and it slides through my finger tips and the glass bottle breaks on the edge of your heart. I try to glue the bottle back together with small talk; I want to save the feeling the booze gave me the first day I met you but that too is draining into that sea. I have to go I say and when I touch you on the shoulder you flop to the ground; a cardboard cutout just like me. I upright you, dust you off. We need kindling I say. But nothing ever lived here you say and I know you’re right nothing could live here. I dump over my filing cabinet and crumple the contents around me. Go now I say and you make to go. They were only dreams you say as you disappear over the ridge. But they were mine I yell but of course it’s too late you are someone else now. I strike the first match and drop it into the mountain of words around me. Nothing. I strike the second match and drop it. Nothing. I take out my flame thrower and this time there is fire. As my world burns up around me I think of sticking my fingers up inside you, the fire now at my neck feels like your kisses, the sizzle is like your whispers in my melting ears. I wonder who you are now as I burn. It is then that I notice some of my dreams are missing amongst the wreckage. I thought I noticed something in your back pocket as you disappeared over that ridge. I hope they treat you better than you treated yourself. The fire is the only thing I see…burn baby burn.