Professional hazard

Warm light peeked through the bedroom window that wrapped around an amorphous shadow he could see only through blurred peripheries. She was awake, barely sunrise, and to his surprise she had gotten dressed. “What are you doing up?” he had said - “leaving” she responded. She turned her head and smiled to him. It was like one of those smiles, sullen and contrived, the kind you force yourself to make after hearing a punch-line gone flat. She was being polite. “But this was no joke” he had thought. Their glassy eyes met over wrinkled sheets. “I love you” – she said. “But I hate you sometimes, and I’m afraid it’s becoming more often than not. You drink too much. You don’t care anymore. You don’t try to. The truth is you hate yourself, and that makes me stupid for loving you.” – “Yea, truly a fool’s errand” he thought, and a hell of a punch-line. The real joke was on her. She had returned to his home later that evening… Perhaps a little anarchy was all that she’d needed to punctuate the mundane.

My heart, though lacking in sight, sees the pain in your brow and the pleasure in your lips. And unlike its greater olfactory senses, it is unfamiliar to your presence yet remembers the scent you’ve left from the night before, cradled between my arms like sand and water. And far beyond its ability to taste, it knows the flavor of its own poisons, bittersweet and only in the heat of the moment though it churns real horror show in the gut of my soul.  And likewise, it is unbeknownst to the complexities of the inner ear, though it has felt the vibrations of your song… Though you have no song left to sing. Most of all, it is tactile, much like the skin. It is receptive to the heat of your presence, but knows with even greater acuity when the game is over. It is cold. It trembles as it awaits its atrophy. And this my friends we call regret.

The human heart beats over 100,000 times in a day. Though, I have felt the heart lie still under breathing flesh, porcelain and untainted. It is fatted and seemingly vibrant, and yet, it’s felt no triumph of will or gut wrenching pain. It has no great loss and thus, no great love. It has no scars and knows its passions only vicariously. “These scars are ugly” they would say. Though little do they know the stories behind each one. And what the fuck could they know? They’re skin was soft and unblemished, pale from the moon and the shade and unbeknownst from the glaring sun of the day. There is no sweat in you, but only tired fat. There is no heart you in, but only tepid breath. “But they are beautiful!” society announces, but what is beauty that is only skin deep and knows no depth but the dull silhouette of complacent souls?! And what is beauty that has not grown to sublimation? but is only a valley beyond a peak. And what is beauty that has no eyes to see past itself? And I looked over at all of them and I said “Your heart beats over 100,000 times in a day, but what does it beat for?”