I'm sitting in the office, making all my calls to respectible, dull HR managers when I notice 'Bohemian Rhapsody' on the radio and Freddie gets to the part where "sometimes" he wishes "he'd never been born at all" and I just break, right over my desk, weeping - and I'm hearing voices from the past, crowd noise, low-voiced confessions in dark rooms, fortune tellers from a childhood ago, that guy that couldn't guess my weight at the State Fair, Paul Simon songs, the sound and feel of pecans cracking under that metal nutcracker we had set up every Christmas, shadowy movie backrow movie make-out sessions (Clint Eastwood's 'Bird' in particular), early morning magpies in the Arizona winter, the softest rain ever, the faint cackle of cassette tape leaders, the gurgle when the coffee pot's done, the wind through the windows as you cross a state line at 75 mph, snowstorm, the excited whimper of puppies crawling all over my prone four-year-old body giggling, a fish rising at dusk to my popping bug, 'I love you' over and over and welcome, welcoming sighs of someone, anyone, the flourescent overhead is silent now, I swear the lights are dimming right here in my office, is the AC still on? because I can't hear it at all anymore, just a light sabre hum and flash from inside a crowded closet, and the attic fan dust sound, do you remember that sound of heat and old board games? Do you know it too? It's ok to tell me, do it quick before we can't speak out loud anymore, you know what I mean don't you? Tell me about my friends, tell me they're somewhere safe and happy and not dying by the minute in dress shoes and jacket, that they're happy 'cause I think I am starting to focus again but I can't call right now. I'm pretty much speechless. When one hears the burning bush speak, when destiny shows up out of the blue, one does not talk back - not at first. Maybe not at all.
I need to find a place I can drink my weight in fountain Coke for a reasonable 75 cents. 'Tainted Love' is on the radio now. Jesus. It never ends. It ends so soon. The first I feel. The last I know.
