I'm afraid. I'm afraid that as I get older, birthdays will start to lose meaning. My father, and most of his friends, turn 50 this year. Do they care? Does it mean anything to them? Will my annual renaissances start to blur and run together, watercolors on an ever-shrinking blank page? Or will I continue to feel each pulse, each sweeping revolution of the hand? I can't tell for which I'm hoping anymore. Maybe both. Maybe neither.

Will I make it to 50? A few birthdays ago, I didn't think so. I didn't want to. I didn't want to make it to 25. What changed? Me?

Last time I saw my grandmother, she said she didn't want to hit triple digits (keep me off the machines). She married my grandfather in 1969. I wonder how he feels about that? Will he be the one to sign the forms for her? How many birthdays until that happens? I think she's 78 deep already.

In November, I'll hit the post again, pass go, collect my 200. Maybe I'll know then.

I've deleted this paragraph four times, let's make it five. Remember when birthdays were fun, happy times? It's a loaded question, how many years I've graced this planet. I've contributed what I can, I'm older than I was then. There are many life lessons to learn, one is how to use the written word. I'll come back to this, I promise, after another decade of remorse, sorrow, discarded drafts and too much bourbon.

I was in my twenties once, living day to day, hoping to survive the decade without succumbing to pain. I hit thirty and realized I'm a third of the way through, if I am lucky. Perhaps it's all happenstance, a roulette of genetics. I take another sip of my drink and watch the condensation drip down the glass, another year in the bag, handed to me with a lemon slice on the edge.

We are all surviving, even if at different tempos. Each year is its own performance, percussion that continues. If the beat goes on, but no one is around to hear it, can you still call it music?

Are you listening to it?

Muzzled

Guns are mouths

In the good old

US of A,

And they really

Must be stopped

From getting

Their own way.

© Bernard Pearson

“All I ever wanted was to offer happiness—

I just never thought it’d be at the expense of my own.”

My smile.

My fake fucking smiles

hiding the blight

while darkness

overshadows light.

Haunting echoes of laughter

spinning off fan blades

and hypnotizing me into nightmares—

Only then do I fall asleep.

I leave the paint on

so, I can sell this bullshit to the mirror

in the morning.

So, I can start my day with lies

and end my day with…

…pointless puddles of pity

no one cares to see—

No one would pay to see.

I paint the floor with tears.

Pollack splattered upon my feet.

I melt like Dali into the floor,

while the stranger in the glass

wonders what his name is

because no one ever asks his real name,

and he’s already forgotten it anyways.

He is just a clown for hire

who puts on a Happy Face for a discount.

I followed the butterfly

along the trail,

eyes fixed on wings

yellow and pale.

I wanted to brush those wings

so soft,

but I’d have brushed

the colors off,

so as I watched it

flutter away,

I walked slowly,

enjoyed the day.

In my memory, while sightseeing, I stopped in a bar for lunch where I made friends with the workers. A friend of theirs invited me to his restaurant for dinner to try some typical Valencian food. I accepted, got the address and left.

In my memory, the meal was delicious. Afterwards, he escorted me– to keep me safe on the night streets.

In reality, I don’t remember the meal and I woke up in an alley, clothes ripped, bloody, bruised.

In reality, I still have a scar where he carved his initials, though I have no memory of his name.

I'm sorry.

We arrived so late.

You're all so cold.

Pale.

Stiff.

A family.

Two teens and a father.

Bound together.

Literally.

By your hands.

Together.

And we, the grand liberators.

We found you.

Together.

Just to pull you apart.

Unwillingly.

And dead.

Together.

And now me.

With you.

Together.

Thinking about my own children.

Alive.

And Safe.

Together.

Soon...

Here we all are.

Our hands dealt in this random game of life.

And just maybe, I'm the wild card.

Lucky me.

Hey,

Remember that fight we had last month?

You had injured yourself trying to save my life. I told you it was a stupid move and that you should have stayed behind like I told you.

You told me it was your job to keep my alive, that you would have stayed behind if I had.

I corrected you and told you that your job was to take over after I left.

You told me you couldn't take over, that I had to keep leading.

Truth is, I don't have the will to lead with you gone.

Come back. Please.

The bed in the guest room was comfortable, but wasn’t the same as home. Lying on her back, she willed herself to sleep.

A cat jumped onto the bed near her feet.

Oh, she thought, hello bedmate...

She felt the cat walk over her legs, felt its feline weight as it draped its body over her abdomen.

Friendly...

She soon drifted off to sleep hoping it wouldn’t begin that kneading thing cats sometimes do and wake her.

In the morning, she poured herself coffee and commented, “I didn’t know you had a cat.”

Her host’s face grew pale, “I don’t.”

I learned the horrors of prescience at the very moment I discovered I was gifted with it.

She was a childhood friend, a year younger. There happened to be a pause in our rambunctious play, a pause just long enough, and our play just close enough, that we accidentally found ourselves looking into one another’s eyes. Being children, the staring itself became the game; exploring each other’s souls inside them, daring ourselves to venture deeper while at the same time being revealed. We passed that point where one laughs to hide their discomfort, or looks away, and we continued even longer, her winded breath so close that I could feel it on my chin, and on my moistened lips. It was then that I saw who she really and truly was, and she me. And it was then that I knew.

“You are going to die.” I whispered.

“I know.”

“What will you do?”

She answered the only way a child could answer when the question is so fearsome as death. “Hide.”

When I left her that day I never saw my childhood friend again.

“Robert?” My mother called from the foyer. “Alicia’s parents can’t find her. Do you know where she is?”

“No Momma,” I lied.

But it did find her, even where we had so carefully hidden her; inside that big old trunk down in her basement, covered between the musty old clothes and things, the heavy cedar top closed and latched.

There’d been death in my friend’s eyes that day. There is no hiding from that.