from Ambivalence and Other Conundrums (Omnidawn, Fall 2013)

REGRET

Beckoned by the things you’d go back for but can’t, you push on, dragging the past behind like a vestigial tail, out of use but undeniably a living part of you, the thing, really, by which you define yourself: lizardo, can-kicker, backward-glancer tripping over a ripple in the road.
            Yet you do go on, determined to get to where your dreams can expand to fill the space of their container, the wild sky just beyond your mind. It’s a shame to be cynical here, in only paragraph two, but necessary for the sake of the truth, which, dressed as the obvious, is counting on you.
           You can go back. But only after you have read this far—the beginning only matters from a certain distance.
           Two pigeons meet in the park and fight over a bit of bread and have no bearing on any of this. You can follow them into the night: they coo like horny machines outside some apartment window, but instead your mother is dead and you are too busy digging a tunnel back to childhood with a spoon.   

DRUNKENNESS

Sip by sip, life becomes tolerable, then pleasant, then milky—as soft and gregarious as a lamb.  The promises you made seem as silly and unimportant, old pieces of paper crumpled at the bottom of your bag.  You are asleep before you realize, and there was no cow blocking the path toward your dreams, which carried you all the way to morning, when life intervened again, a fact smack in the face.
            Now the long day stands before you, with its thousands of gnats horroring every possible path.
            You had promised yourself, years and years ago, never to drink alone, like your father drank.  Then you thought one or two might be ok.  Then, after many drinks, many evenings spent stewing in your sour juices, the sin you’d committed seemed so far in the past an apology wouldn’t matter. So now all the evenings roll in this way, moist and comforting, hugging you how you always needed to be hugged.
            Maybe age will set in like this too, so slowly you won’t have to notice, except for a few acidic moments that will be easy to black out. Hopefully death will be like entering a dream half-awake, half in control, just enough to slip into the swampy drama.
           There is no real accounting for what you owe. Even those who cry and lament and rage when you die will die too, their echoes far too faint to trace to a source. For now, sleep well. Not even happiness feels this good.

WHAT YOU LOVE

Well, you’ve got to do something.  On the one hand, the options are limitless. On the other, obviously, most options are unavailable to you. Those that are are obscured by the black hopelessness of possibility.  
            How many times did you tell yourself you knew what you wanted?
           Some people are able to follow a single desire like a rope tied off just beyond the horizon. Some, annoyingly, will even say it’s a curse; of course it isn’t.  How justified is our hatred of the blesséd and their blessings.
           It’s good to have a hobby. I read books about jazz while listening to albums in the evening, after work, once the kids are in bed. My wife thinks it’s noise but puts up with it, barely.  I can’t decide whether to go on or off my diet: indulge or withhold, sew happiness while I can or fortify my character…a hobby offers at least the illusion of a still point toward which one’s compass needle is trained.
            A calling in life is just another decision, meaningless in the grand scheme, of which there isn’t one; no one is calling. The one who feels called is pushing against the great, indifferent weight which falls like an ocean on everyone’s shoulders—thankfully we are all in this together.
            You must follow your heart, though all hearts are heading to the same place, a place for hearts only.
            It takes 10,000 hours of repetition to achieve mastery, but don’t think about that or you’ll never start; all mountains rise slowly, perhaps a little too slowly, into the one sky.

Read our “Between the Lines” Interview with Craig Morgan Teicher

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Sally Ball
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Mary Lou Buschi
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Brandon Courtney
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Jenny Doughty
Cornelius Eady
Vievee Francis
James Allen Hall
Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick
Matthew Haughton
Kevin Heaton
Maria Hummel
Sarah Johnson
George Kalamaras
Toshiya Kamei
Owen Lewis
Timothy Liu
Victoria Lynne McCoy
Gerardo Mena
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Muriel Nelson
Christopher Prewitt
Lynne Procope
Molly Rose Quinn
Cat Richardson
David Roderick
Damian Rogers
Michael Schmeltzer
Allison Seay
Laura Sheahen
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P.J. Williams
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William Kelley Woolfitt
Monika Zobel