Woderful Life

Walking out of a candlelit room into a darkened hallway, I hear a voice coming through the screen door telling me come to him,


I do, wish I hadn't,would've rather remained out of loop. I sit there, feeling as uncomfortable as I've never felt before in my life, he gears up to tell me the only secret I've ever known before I was told. I still believe it should've kept walking.

Sitting there, side by side with the most familiar stranger anyone on this earth has ever spent a lifetime with, staring out over a blacked out city underneath a moon acting as the only source of light on the entire coast, I get let in on something I thought I used to pray for...the promise of mortality.

"I'm not going to be around much longer" he tells me, while putting his vice of choice down on the step to sweat in the summer heat. "don't say shit like that " I tell him, trying to sound like something other than broken tired cunt I was at the time.


He goes on to tell he how to get around embalming laws, while I squirm at the thought of having to bury a man with no proper good-bye whatsoever within 24 hours the final curtain call. Then I promise to abide...

Cut to less than a year later, I'm standing over an open casket surrounded by fakes feigning interest and flowers sent out of guilt wishing i hadn't lied to him. Photos of a military man in all his scrawny pneumonia stricken glory, stories of an aunt's burning front porch, and memory of best friends losing their jobs on the very same day glide by me as wonder where the ashes will be when its over. Walking out of the crematorium holding three pink roses handed to me by this mans only known savior, a swaying swigging' drunk, all I wish to do is get home and burn a gift basket placed by a delivery boy on the same stoop where I sat and listened to a stranger I still dont know. I get my wish granted. Walk inside, take my coat off, get started on the ample supply of poison that I cant let go to waste, and think to myself "what a wonderful life."