Depression
It’s not an ”I’m sad today because of X…” Sort of thing. It’s an ”I wish I were dead today/this entire month for no apparent reason” sort of thing. And it doesn’t just go away, it has been consistent for about 14 years. So there’s something you may not have known about me.
Dammit.
I thought this trip would make me feel better, but right now I’m more depressed than I was before. I just want to go home, but that is going to be a 3 day process.
The Bangkok Files
I could already write a small collection of nonfiction essays about this trip.
Ask me about that time I was wheeled out of a very large mall on a stretcher!
A thoroughly restructured “Live Oak”
I traced the skid marks and orange paint
on the road, right to the dead-end of your life.
A tree stands there, stripped of its bark.
It’s rare to leave a scar
like that on the landscape,
playing like a video to family
and passing strangers for months.
Now every day I’m watching
the results of
your bad decisions
unfold in my mind:
Your foot presses down,
harder, harder,
speeding into the night—
no lights
to guide the way.
The road of life
has one final speed bump
and the sudden loss of control
separates three bodies from their souls.
I couldn’t help but wonder
what went through your head
just before the steering wheel did.
Was it a childhood memory,
or a memory of your child?
Did you realize you’d made a mistake
and regret it at 80 miles per hour?
Was there ever any consideration
of the impact your actions could have?
Or did you even have time to think at all
before that impact
turned your SUV into a compact?
Two children lost their mother,
three mothers lost their children.
The oak’s heartwood will heal
but the families’ hearts will not.
Tragedy does not excuse your folly.
So now every day I’m watching
The results of your bad decisions unfold,
Every time I drive past
The tree that holds three souls.
