At The End Of This Chapter
At the end of this chapter
I
am still the same schmuck that asked the girl out
on a little
note attached to a box of candy
that I
didn't even have the guts to give to her myself
because
I was just a shy, little boy.
I realize that dating her would
have been virtually impossible
because
I couldn't even talk to her
or look
at her face with out getting light on my feet.
I realize that people who are in
love actually communicate
most of
the time, anyway,
and I
would have been a bundle of nerves at best.
I say, 'What was I thinking?'
At
the end of this chapter,
a piano
plays a lovely, sad song
and it
makes me nostalgic for a job I once had
selling
clothes among friends,
but it's
sad nostalgia because I know how it ends---
with a
fading passion for any of its meaning
because
I couldn't keep my wits about me
when just
a tinge of crisis reared its head
and a
store needed me most.
I hand in a letter of resignation
and think
that 4 years isn't long enough to make history
and wish,
if only inside my head,
that somehow
I would find the strength
and the
passion to want to carry on,
forget
any notions of departure
and take
root once more,
but it
doesn't happen.
At
the end of this chapter,
I do find a house that I can live
in.
It has an average sized yard
and I
begin a steady regiment of mowing and watering the lawn.
I do have a wife and she has a
penchant for gardening.
I do have children and they have
what I had
when I
was a young lad about their ages,
a passion
to just get out there,
mix things
up,
see what
happens.
I do have a lineage of my own
I do have a future history
that I
continue to write.
At
the end of this chapter,
the details
grow into their own.
© 2006 Michael Appleby