Diet Coke Diet

What is the price getting a reprieve from re-living? Getting it right.

And so..it happened, again.

I saw it coming and it made me laugh, even as the shadow passed over my face.

Electricity pulsed through my nerves. I knew I would not resist even still.

It was as if she knew, and was the daughter...

Not of the other, but of something unresolved, and buried far away, in barren deserts.

Things-had-stopped-happening.

I felt that I just needed a chance to get square with the universe...

So I grasped Helios’ cargo, like a torch, and I held it to my chest.

Born fifteen years...and one day apart...and they were the same.

First time, I was the younger, and there was a kid, a husband, booze and tragedy chaos swirling all about us.

This time, I was the elder, with passions like a caldera, searing in the heat.

This time there were paper cups, notebooks and M&M's melting into the sheets.

There were endless Big Gulps and Parliaments.

Party all night. Sleep. Repeat.

It was like a celebration of monotony, I participated in bewilderment, with morbid curiosity.

I would, but only in the daytime, by the window, sober...as big trucks rumbled by, on the street below.

Spinning fan blades cut their noise into ribbons.

There was incessant instruction, pedantic like child, to a child...infinitely. It was never what I expected, but it seemed contrived, nonetheless.

We were always driving, always traveling, to and fro, never stopping, and never arriving anywhere.

The days were endless, and my brain-poached, slowly in the sun.

I'd dive into the cold water when I could take no more. Finally cooled and sated, I would stagger back to shore again.

I thought I was the rescuer. I thought I was the smarter.

She was love's tyrant, orbed with cloudy-green irises, squinting out to sea. Always peevish, always turbulent, always raging.

I came to that place to purge the chaos, but merely churned-up trouble and froth.

I knew exactly where I was, the course was charted from memory.

I swam, down and down, until the pressure was too much for my head to take.

I raced to the surface when it was clear, that I still could not conquer it, with all my dues and all my grit.

I collapsed on the beach coughing fire and brimstone from my lungs, laughing while shaking my fist at the judgemental smirking sun.

I looked back at the ocean seethingly.

I reached into my chest, and pulled out my heart to lick its wounds.

I winced bitterly, while wedging it back into place.

I had gotten what I came for, and when I came to, I was more than square.

I thought, “Next time, the universe owes me.”