the space above my ears.

Innocent Rehabilitations

There's a certain relief to the weariness you feel when your weight in gold has reached its peak,

When you are quite literally pondering the idea of selling it, maybe to buy a pair of shoes or a hardcover copy of something Lovecraft.

Your limited time is spent watching yourself peak on rewind, smile slowly creeping onto your dry, chapped lips until you remember that you are on a slow descent as we speak, never having really appreciated what it was like to look at things and not immediately feeling the urge to search them for dirty secrets.

You started with nothing, then grew slowly more radiant, absorbing all that memory like a flame to gasoline,

Burning brighter each day, spreading, crackling, glowing, until without warning, it stopped.

You watch as that young, beguiling inferno retracts, slowly enough for you to see every flame licking the air backwards and recoiling into itself, but too fast to properly mourn it,

Too fast for you to cash in all those rain checks you left in puddles on the ground,

And say one more thing to all the people you turned away.

After all, life does both begin and end in amnesia.

Evening has passed, the hue has risen.

The rest is just reliving.

We faced what was the hardest part at the time, opening our eyes to something other than that familiar blank slate.

Having to make peace with the fact that we now had an outline of a novel to build up from,

Saying goodbye to art in silly fonts and drawings of little men peeking over a stone wall.

Dictators, in their greed, would swallow the demigods whole, knives still strapped to ankles, swords still tucked away in sheathes at the hip,

And when the mother goat comes by, little half-Zeus trotting anxiously behind her, they will regret not chewing.

As the fascist wold blinks his bleary eyes open, he'll feel that his meal has turned to stone in his stomach.

While he drags his mysteriously dry and heavy body desperately toward the river, he'll pretend to wonder why this happened to him.

As he falls in, pulls downward by the rock he doesn't remember swallowing, he'll briefly feel a sense of calm.

As he sinks infinitely into the river, he will slowly fade to the sound of wine and cheering, elated bleats and dancing hooves.

As demanded by the victors, the wolf will drown.
Half-Zeus will go home.

I will let him inside the house and he'll grab my waist, spinning me in the air until we both collapse, laughing, on the couch.

He'll light the gas stove in the kitchen while I read by the window, knocking pots and pans together clumsily while he mumbles about avocados being so damn expensive.

He'll bring our plates over with a brightness in his step I've never seen before, sunbeams of joy bursting from the cracks of his irritated expression because the day has finally come where the worst trial he faces is overpriced fruits.

Later, shuffling through the hallway in my slippers, I'll find him paining the walls of the bathroom the exact shade of the sweater of his I've stolen and put on over my t-shirt.

They greatest gift, he says, while we brush our teeth at the mirror, is the becoming accustomed to pure mundanity.

Packing all the glimmering trophies away in the attic, leaving out maybe one or two to rest in the fireplace mantle.

Only the most valuable ones, though, like the horn of a black ram or the solitary china dish you managed to salvage with only a small chip on the rim,

Drawing yourself in portraits with the scars, making them beautiful by making them anything at all,

Laying back against a rough brick wall on a suspiciously warm December evening, watching a very beautiful girl teach people how to dance.

And when she rests her head on your shoulder, knowing that she is here because she wants to be.

Then, I add, taking that love you've made and wrapping it in newspaper, slipping it briskly into the pocket of someone's trousers.

Guiding them to someone else who you know will see the beauty they have and will not leave them to sleep in the stone.

Seeing things that were so invisible before, like the spine of the city, laying so restfully between the gentle countryside and the buzzing streets illuminated by drugstore signs with burnt-out letters,

The conversations exclusively about the most miscellaneous of topics,

The drag of wind on your hand stuck out the car window,

The paper chains adorning the trees, dotted with dark spots from the melted snowflakes,

Neighborhood streets which prompt you to spill your deepest secrets, and whomever you walk those streets with,

Washing away all that fear of breaking something that isn't yours, because in the end, that worry only breaks you.

Take a breath to still your shaking hands and show mercy to the broken-winged sparrow, frozen in time.

Spare it the fate of the fox, give it a proper burial.

Always remain just sober enough to determine that the carousel of strawberries bouncing enthusiastically around your head are, indeed, not really there.

And while you become accustomed, prolong it

Because it's when the becoming ends that your fire begins to dim.