tick tick tick

last week was heaven, nearly. access restricted, interactions limited. pure pleasure that makes the return the the meaningless montony of my working life more hellacious than was originally the case. i am counting the seconds. 12 days times 7 hours times 60 minutes times 60 seconds: only 302400 to go...
54 today only he seems so much older, so much younger. k's choice wrote the perfect song for us. i played it for him once and he recognized the truth i saw. why our relationship has been so consistently fraught with conflict i'll never understand. i wonder at their ability to raise such decent kids. she is beautiful but slightly troubled and terribly insecure, but she is nowhere near approximating the disasters i've witnessed in the halls, thongs out the back of their pants, cigarettes drooping from their painted lips. she's a good kid, if neurotic. he's a good kid, too, and adorable. they're very grounded, even if they're both mildly compulsive about food. i know where they get that...and i know it will take both of them a few years of living on their own to overcome the frantic feeling that arises when you think just maybe the supply is limited.
he sends me poetry from afar. i wish i could adventure with him; i so envy his freedom, his ability to flit from nation to nation, exploring, discovering, reflecting. i so envy his solitude, his total lack of consequence. how did i ever become so bound by secularism? how did the payment of bills become my reason for rolling out of bed? this isn't what i was supposed to be. before he died, he pointedly told me that he was glad i was planning to do something somewhat profitable with my life (before i threw a kink into that plan, too), that he had long feared i would spend the rest of my life floating through life wearing a flowy skirt and armed with an equally flowy pen. he said he feared i would try to save the world. because he identified the part of me that desperately wanted nothing more than to rescue the universe. the part of me that's now buried beneath debt and more ious than i can count.
he threw her in the garbage...did i inadvertently force it? we are blending so oddly. i don't know what to make of his expression last night, of his looking up at me but not at me.
she calls. and one countdown eclipses the other.
tick
tick
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