Compassion
My ears popped. I woke up. The errant speaker came online. A record started playing in the right direction after running backwards for an hour. My hangover subsided. These children found a way out of the maze through call and response. My head cleared. Ten people said the same exact thing to me, but the eleventh, my god, the eleventh really got me. I forgave myself. I went to a foreign country and everyone’s right—you really learn how limited your world is when you see more of it. Someone went to prom with you and had a funny story to tell changing everything I thought about you. Things taste different in Istanbul. No one but Americans like Root Beer. Funny how no one cares if you’re topless on the beaches of St. Tropez. Should I have generically referred to the south of France instead of naming santropay? I don’t mind that I sound pretentious for saying santropay. My computer identified the facsimile template of multiple of shitty recordings within your original love song to me. I hear the hum of a cathode ray tube just turned off, otherwise I might have believed the television had enveloped me. You knew the curtains would eventually fall as they hung on limbs meant to biodegrade. Even more tenuous than hair; perhaps tissue. We knew that my waking up was all you ever wanted. I heard a great episode of a radio show about compassion that suggested you are still the fool for lacking compassion for yourself. This conversation is the worst nightmare your therapist swears is not taking place behind your back. Compassion, my friend. A regard is compassion. It is not that I woke up and looked away. It is that looking at you no longer compels me to run.
