February 4, 2023: People Try to Fix You

People try to fix you
as if you’re broken
or as if you have been doing things wrong
all your life.

They tell you, “You don’t understand.
Let me show you how it’s done.”
And you let them.
You stay calm and let them
teach you whatever it is they want to teach you.

People try to fix you
and expect you to be fixed the next time they see you.
But they don’t understand that they can never change you
because they are the ones who need to change.

They try to fix you
only because they are broken,
and you don’t have the courage or the time
to tell them that they are.

September 8, 2022: Doing Well

In the back of a taxi cab. Window down. Wind in my beard. The sun shining in a turquoise sky.

Heading to the barbershop to get a haircut and trim my beard. After that, lunch with my wife. Chinese. And after that, work. Online meetings.

Actually, you know, I was just thinking, “Hard work got me somewhere, after all.” Here. It’s not the best place, and it’s not the worst. I could do better, and I’ll sure be trying that later.

But not today. Because tonight I got to pack. In the morning, I’ll be in Prague with my wife. Celebrating our one year wedding anniversary.

I can’t wait to get drunk with her, to get lost with her, and laugh, and love, and dance, and live.

I did well. I did very well. Can’t think of regrets.

It’s time to have some fun.

April 7, 2022: Time to become a new man again

Woke up wanting
to become a new man
again.

The birds were singing,
mockingly tweeting
while fragments of pointless conversations
and choruses from the night before
ricocheted in my head.

Memories blown to shreds.
Everything fleeting
except regret.

Thoughts – whirlwinds
in my crumbling mind! –
were like propelled balls
in a pinball machine.

I was crying, “God…  
Was I playing
beer pong?
I was. I kept on playing
beer pong,
losing almost every game.”

The birds were singing,
“He must become a new,
new man.
The man he is now
is self-destructing.”