An Honest Assessment
The bedroom door is slightly ajar. She’s blabbing on her cell phone.
“He’s a selfish slut lover, hangs around all day writing notes to himself on the back of old envelopes. He hardly showers, rots on the couch, ideally with what he considers a good book, something we’d never get into, the French writers and the weird ones who feel they’re somehow turning the tide. Jackasses like him. I’ve had it up to here!”
Hardly the Gettysburg Address, but a kind of purity, an honest assessment of not feeling whole, an interesting turn against every- thing society tells her to tolerate.
When you lose in love it becomes more about you than you’d ever dare to admit.
I didn’t know how to say the correct thing. I didn’t have a plan for summer smokes or winter wine, for a future amid uncertainty. I fully understood everything she said; it was nearly therapeutic to hear it out loud.
A good-bye note? Why bother. I packed nothing. I simply grabbed my coat and left via the front door, the night clouds smiling down deeply, the lightning bugs showing their silver lining.
Horsefly
an inky horsefly keeps slamming itself against the smudged window pane, beating its brains out
bothered by things we’ll probably never understand
traps, gossip, goading, territorial invasion? who knows.
but i bet it’s something simple, perhaps an unresolved household disruption no one counted on –
such as finding your lover in your bed with someone else –
the little details of life –
that would drive any one of us insane.
Cary Bogart Ziter is the author of several published books for young readers. Prior to his retirement he worked for the New York State Tax Department, Exxon and IBM, including long-term assignments in Paris and Hong Kong. He earned his master’s in literature from Bennington College. His poetry has appeared in Action, Spectacle, Killer Nashville, Blueline, Front Range Review, California Quarterly, The New Croton Review and many other literary journals. He and his wife, Jozi, live in New York’s Hudson Valley region.