Weep Is a Port of Call

Sometimes I feel like the unhappiness leaks out of me. Like bleeding bloody stigmata, like contagion, it comes in waves, this. It's grief, it's old, He visits me, He says Child. And I deny, I deny, I put a face on, I wear a wrap around this till no one can see. But it's been coming again, we have appointments, Grief and I, I pretend I do not see his face till I am in the dark and small. And sometimes, sometimes, orgasms, sorrowgasms break the flood. So, feeling those edges of late, I go a fortnight without coming. I heard my neighbor thru the wall last eve, fucking his girlfriend, and the anonyminity of it made me want to give voice and touch, to have my own small fisted sounds lost in their cacophony. My private emotional gamble. It wasn't that I wanted sex, sex does not go far enough, there's something past it, out there in a place called Keen. And so I come. my heart, my heart it is beating so fast. My throat opened like a snake, that kind of cry where your whole body self becomes convex, and you choke on tears even while you are climbing higher and higher, the cold cold bones of hemorrhage without faith. Eclipse. The late October moon shining gothic, a schooner in the clouds, stone faced, looking down on me thru the shutters. I pour water in the basin, ablution, and walk down the lane. It's late, it is nigh on midnight and I am trying to make it to the downtown corner store before close. The same bearded lady that always serves me is there, but oh, tonight a drunk is getting raucous, he's won his first one hundred on those damn tickets, poor fuck, my gambles are never on money. And I'm biting my lip, because I can feel that I am going to start crying again, and I do not want Whisker Lady and the Drunk looking at me incredulous thinking I'm emotional over some stranger's win when what I am having clearly is a small nervous breakdown in the moment. I go back into the night, I gulp the salt air, I'm alive, I can do this, it is only Grief, my friend, come round again.