i call all my friends after 20 years of no contact and invite them to visit me at my house, which is a farm in the middle of nowhere. they approach the farm gates and i appear looking like this
..go on…….
i lead you into the barn where i live and offer you snacks and refreshments. it’s a bowl of minnows and 3 caprisun pouches
accept the capri sun, cautiously refuse the minnows
i tell you that it’s fine, leaves more for me, but you can tell im a little hurt. we watch cutthroat kitchen in silence, i seem to be attempting to drink my caprisun through my gas mask, but im failing miserably. you say nothing.
i say nothing
at one point i go into a shed and bring out more caprisun pouches and a single triscuit for you
when i was 12 i babysat this girl for a few years and she would come to me and show me her art, drag me by my wrists and point at the pieces she’d made during the week. and she’d be like “do the voice” and i’d put on a sports-announcer olympics-style voice and be like “such form! this level of coloring! why i haven’t seen such perfection in crayola in a long time. and what is this? why jeff, now this is a true risk… it seems she’s made … a monochrome pink canvas…. i haven’t seen this attempted since winter 1932… and i gotta say, jeff, it’s absolutely splendid” and she’d fall back giggling. at the end of every night she’d check with me: “did you really like it?” and i’d say yes and talk about something i noticed and tucked her in.
she was just accepted into 3 major art schools. she wrote me a letter. inside was a picture from when she was younger. monochrome pink.
“thank you,” it said, “to somebody who saw the best in me.”
the moon is beautiful 