Quiet Drudgery

It feels safer to write about despair than my hopes and dreams. 

Despair comes off the page like shattered safety glass after a car accident, filling your mouth with crystal clear gravel.

Spit it out in your lap with a little blood dribble and whip lash. 

Insurance will cover it eventually. Everyone needs a new car at some point.

Hopes and dreams, beautiful glass blown bubbles in an art gallery with that alarmingly white light, suspended so neatly on fishing line.

So easy to snip and shatter in thin splinters that get in your shoes and burn for days like fiberglass burns. 

Months from now you'll see a tiny glimmer from the original aspiration, 

like you keep randomly seeing the sun catch on tiny shards from your favorite shot glass that hit the counter at just the right angle to never be used again. 

You're not supposed to drink, so maybe it's for the best. 

And maybe those hopes and dreams weren't supposed to work out, or the timing was off, or you made it wrong. 

Maybe it was supposed to fall and crash and land on the bottom of the ocean floor,

where the waves tumble the shards into dull gravel

To fill your mouth 

And dribble

Onto

Your lap.