Everything in moderation

I line up my sadnesses like toy train cars. I poke them with cardboard triangles on sticks and set them adrift in my tub. I tie strings from them to the knob and slam the door. I pose them like stuffed animals in a pretend jury. I leave them in the pockets of my jeans while they're in the wash.

I tease up my sadnesses' bangs and set them with hairspray. I let them wear my favorite rings. I help them into the crook of the redwood in my backyard and paint their portraits. I cut off pieces of them and eat their sacred flesh. I write their names on the ballot and elect them to parliament.

In other words, I will never leave that narrow beach of alternating sun and storm. I will always be tricked by glittering sand and half-clad bodies. I will always be led to the southern end of the beach and trapped by tide and disoriented by rain.

I have tried hiding in my hotel room, but one wall opens onto the pool and the kitchen staff passes between my bed and the dresser. I have almost stopped trying to hide my secrets. Let the other guests look through the tattered curtains!

Before this was the terror of moss and mold, of rank water and slime. We huddled, didn't we? And died, while others crawled first on two, then on four, to the farthest reaches of the desert.

I cannot define your pleasure for you. It does the hokey pokey with my language. Your pleasure is something like an army on the moon. Your pleasure is like cotton batting in the clouds. Why do I lie? Your pleasure is a frozen glacier in my throat.

Here I am in the earth's lowest hole crying for the abandoned. What other hope is there of floating?