Starless Night

I think I’m afraid of love.

I realized it this morning while I was sitting alone in my living room.

“Who is going to find you when it happens?” I thought.

“You’re gonna drop dead in here one day and no one is going to know about it until you’re stinky and your neighbors call your roadkill smellin' ass in for a welfare check.”

The deep navy walls of my condo, “starless night”—that’s the paint color. Fitting—seemed to transform into the walls of a crypt.

Like an Egyptian tomb.

You know?

With the scarabs and hieroglyphics.

The kind with a white ibis tiptoeing through the reeds and lotus blossoms.

And the all-seeing eye—

its carven stare cutting into me.

I could feel the immobilizing linen wrappings seize me—mummified.

“What will Anubis weigh my heart against?” I thought.

“My heart that’s afraid of love.”

Chime, chime. Chime, chime.

I caught my breath.

The coffee pot went off, thank God.

I was out of the underworld.

I don’t remember anymore the feeling of love—

There’s not really warmth and butterflies in this small tomb in the A.

There’s just me.

Did I feel it with the boy?

I can’t remember anymore.

“Can’t means won’t, Trey,” that’s what momma would tell me.

Maybe that’s right.

Maybe it’s not “can’t.”

Maybe it's “won’t.”