Just back from a long vacation…
he unpacked his mind…
and put his thoughts away…
some went back into the closet…
some, the chest of drawers…
others got hung on a hook…
the everyday destined for the washing machine…
the finer things, the local dry cleaner…
His hat on a shelf…
his shoes at the foot of his bed…
coins and keys in a worn, wooden bowl…
atop his rickety, single nightstand…
not a photo or a picture on the walls…
to trouble, to capture his concentration…
he was organized, if nothing else…
he was organized…
He took off his tie, shirt and pants…
folded them neatly across the bed…
put on his robe and floppy slippers…
and sat down in his one, comfy chair…
lit a clean, white, menthol cigarette…
took a long, hard, deep drag…
and drifted out the tiny round window…
on the far side of the empty room…
He wondered why all the bad memories stick…
while the good ones seem to dissolve into smoke…
dark, distant dreams, muddled mirages…
beyond his reach, his touch and embrace…
he could only recall the loss of love…
but nothing of its dawn and discovery…
his remembrances full of his own pain and suffering…
but little of his lover’s pleading and tears…
“Some day I’m going to move to Paris…
where people know how to live and love”…
he quietly mused to himself…
while a smirk crept over his face…
and a vague tingle ran up his thighs…
as he imagined himself with mysterious lovers…
dancing under the Eiffel Tower…
“Free at last, Free at last”…
He tapped his feet on the hardwood floor…
and made that clicking, smacking sound…
that came from the corner of his mouth…
that sound of self satisfaction…
that sound that once caused his woman…
to run screaming through the clapboard house…
out the front door and down the street…
never to be seen again…
End.
(c) Billy Batson, Saber-Tooth Stories.
