gas_station_flowers raze for a while i think you talked to me more than you talked to him. and you were married to him. we started talking because i was trying to get him to show up when we made plans and nothing else was working. it wasn't that he didn't want to see me. he just didn't give a shit. one of the nights he was supposed to come over but didn't show, i walked across the street to the park. i sat on one of the swings. it felt different. no one was there. it was me and the dark and the memories of being here with him and getting high and laughing until we thought we would pass out. like the night that forty-year-old guy auditioned to be our drummer when we were both less than half his age. all he did was sit on the drum throne and talk. he said he had a plan. we would get a gig playing reggae music on a cruise ship. we would smoke pot and let the ocean rock us to sleep at night. or if that didn't pan out, we could be a cover band. we could slip in an original once in a while. if his girlfriend danced to the song, we'd know it was good enough to keep in the set. in two hours he didn't even hit the snare drum once. after he left, we sat on the swings and smoked a joint and i said, "imagine us on the cover of rolling stone. imagine him hanging out with your girlfriend." and we lost it. there was nothing to laugh about now. i walked home. i brought as many cans of beer up the stairs as i could carry and tried to watch "ran". i couldn't get into it. i watched "battle royale" instead. i thought about keiko's smile. i felt the beer tear up my stomach but i didn't get drunk. i couldn't even do that right anymore. we haven't talked in years. we were facebook friends for a while. i met you once. your voice was different than i thought it would be. deeper and darker. a little wounded. you asked me if i knew anyone in midland, michigan. i said i just liked the sound of the words, so i put them in a song. you said you grew up there. no one else ever said anything about that song. one valentines_day you had to ask your facebook friends if they'd seen your husband anywhere. he went out drinking the night before and didn't come home. he showed up around dinnertime with some cheap flowers he bought from a gas station. i don't know what you told the kids. when i play out the movie of that day in my mind, i see you grabbing a glass from a kitchen cupboard and putting the flowers in that. he wouldn't have bought you a vase. he bought you some pens for your birthday once. so there was that. i think it was the same year he forgot to come home on valentines_day. he's spent the last fifteen years trying to run away from what he thought he wanted, while you try to keep your family from falling apart. you keep dyeing your hair different colours. maybe you think you can chisel yourself into a different person, and that might make him want to stay. because he's there, but he isn't with you. not really. when i read the things you wrote, i used to see your blank face fogging up the screen with the mess of everything you wanted to say but couldn't. you could trace out the words with your finger, but they'd be gone as soon as the air got to them anyway. 211004 what's it to you? who go blather from