It Was Only When You Left It

I Wandered Over Across The Hall Where They Were Showing A Short Movie About Vasectomies. Much Later I Told Her That I'd Actually Gotten A Vasectomy A Long Time Ago, And Somebody Else Must Have Gotten Her Pregnant. I Also Told Her Once That I Had Inoperable Cancer And Would Soon Be Passed Away And Gone, Eternally. But Nothing I Could Think Up, No Matter How Dramatic Or Horrible, Ever Made Her Repent Or Love Me The Way She Had At First, Before She Really Knew Me.

Sometimes I Heard Voices Muttering In My Head, And A Lot Of The Time The World Seemed To Smolder Around Its Edges. But I Was In A Little Better Physical Shape Every Day, I Was Getting My Looks Back, And My Spirits Were Rising, And This Was All In All A Happy Time For Me. All These Weirdos, And Me Getting A Little Better Right In The Midst Of Them. I Had Never Known, Never Even Imagined For A Heartbeat, That There Might Be A Place For People Like Us.

And With Each Step My Heart Broke For The Person I Would Never Find, The Person Who'd Love Me. And Then I Would Remember I Had A Wife At Home Who Loved Me, Or Later That My Wife Had Left Me And I Was Terrirfied, Or Again Later That I Had A Beautiful Alcoholic Girlfriend Who Would Make Me Happy Forever. But Every Time I Entered The Place There Were Veiled Faces Promising Everything And Then Clarifying Quickly Into The Dull, The Usual, Looking Up At Me And Making The Same Mistake.

She Had Nothing In This World But Her Two Hands And Her Crazy Love For Jesus, Who Seemed, For His Part, Never To Have Heard Of Her.

We Can’t Always Tell The Whole Story About Ourselves.