Where is sad? 

You wake up in the morning, let the dog out. 

There is fruit in the refrigerator.  Grapes and apples from the tree in the back yard.  It felt good to pick them but the flesh is still too cold and it hurts your teeth.

At work, you flirt.  You are a tease.  You want to be loved.  Someone carrying so much toast home in their gums leaves you a note that says “U R beautiful.”  You throw up in the bathroom, tempering the victory.

At work, you wish someone would ask you what’s wrong.  But you won’t be that beggar, attention sick with big watery eyes.  If someone asks you what is wrong, you will say “Nothing,” with a smile, and maybe develop a crush.

You refill coffee.  You spill refilled coffee.

Found.

You are obsessed with the way the inside of your body feels.  Food becomes distraction, but you are getting to know the curves of your stomach when it is empty.

You contract.

The house is suddenly full of sugar and butter and wine.

You want to hug computer screens, and ask the mailman if his wife was ever unfaithful.

You begin reading.  Three books at once. 

One thousand odd pages.

One odd year.  There will be parallels.  There will be words that spark sense memory.  Your brain has never known how to turn off.  You should know better.

A chapter title talks about his favorite artist.  You are offended.

You rip out the page.  You hide the book.

It was your mother’s book.  Something borrowed.

What is sad?

You go to bed and wake up and sleep and wake.  You have been practicing this your entire life so you can do it without thinking.

One day, sad is the third thing you think about.  You feel guilty, like you are emotionally cheating on depression.  But you leave him on your pillow when you walk down the stairs.  He is so heavy, and your back is starting to hurt.

At work, you are now a siren, and sick of yourself.  All of these men have babies.  You want them to love their wives and they do.

That is what sad is.  Sad is that you want these men to love their wives and girlfriends and babies and they do.

One thousand odd seconds.  One thousand odd minutes, days, months, eternities.

You start making lists.  You are going to plan, to move your life forward, to put one foot in front of the other, because when you told your mom, she was speechless.  She is the motheriest mother, so full of mothery words, but she was out of them, the shock of the whole thing maybe.

What she did tell you was to keep walking, so you’re going to.

First on your list is to circle the moon.  You are going to fly to the moon, you are going to allow your craft to be sucked into its orbit.

From there, you will look back at the earth and watch the waves as they crest and fall, encouraged by your added gravity.  You alone, you will have made the world more vital.

Later, the force will fling you back toward the turning earth.  But you will stop on the way to leave sad on a bit of intergalactic rock, wandering through the nothing with no end in sight.

The heat of reentry is gorgeous and appalling and you will stop breathing, a child excited by the prospect of a big-kid adventure.

And then you will be just five seconds from the surface, the ocean there waiting for the crash, to envelop you in the tide you made.  You will panic.

How long have you been gone?  You will be trying to remember your notes from senior year physics. 

Is the moon’s revolution slow or fast? 

Has everyone aged?  

Will anyone even recognize you?

And who knows if you will just stay wayward in that sea.

All this, all this.  Just to lose sad.