When we are alone together our energy flows around us in many ways. Sometimes it’s full of love, blissfully joy, happiness or comfort for one another. While other times that energy is fueled by challenges that arise. Challenges that are brought about to help us to fully heal the wounds that we’ve until now, only placed bandages over.

It has come to my awareness that while our energy freely floats about when we are alone together, when we are around others especially strangers, it changes.

Our thoughts and actions begin to synchronize as our energy quickly and tightly binds itself together. Morphing into something much bigger, stronger and unbreakable as it rises high above plane we stand upon. Creating a fortress of safety and security our energy becomes one whole... a force to be reckoned with.

You say I brought you here,

I left you in this place.

I say your actions lay

independent of my motives.

Wrong does not become right,

when I fail to be

what you desired of me.

Your betrayal lolls

independent of my neglect.

I am not right in this

so much as you are wrong.

Your felony lays waste

to all my misdemeanors.

You’ll get no apologies.

I may have left you wanting,

but you have left me broken.

Like a yeti, he was.

Large, hairy and red-nosed, he yawns. At my table he yawns. Oy.

Maybe a yeti doesn’t have a red nose, I don’t know. But I think a yeti’s nose is wet when he’s healthy.

In any case, there he was. Solomon Abramowitz. Sitting there at the other end of my table, mouth full of marble cake and lady fingers. I tried to be careful I shouldn’t let any of my appendages get within proximity to Solomon’s undulating mandible. I’m not entirely certain how much he differentiates lady fingers from Abey fingers.

Since school at RJJ on the lower east side I’ve known him, Solomon Abramowitz. He is now and he has always been, a mamzer. Don’t get me wrong, he’s good-spirited enough and he’s no slouch. In fact, he has his own HVAC business now.

So nu, why does he have to come here to my home to eat all my marble cake? All my marble cake that I bought. For me. With the money that I make as a state auditor. Solomon Abramowitz should know from the kind of money that an auditor for the state makes, halevai!

Mr. Fancy HVAC business with the shiny, pointy shoes is not so fancy that he can’t eat my marble cake.

So what does he want?

Same as always? Just to be what he’s always been, a professional mamzer?

“It’s good to see you, Abramowitz.” I says to him.

He says nothing. His mouth is still full of marble cake.

But he reaches out his arms and I can’t tell for a minute if he’s choking, he’s saying hold on, he’s swallowing? He’s doing something. Somethings happening. I don’t know what.

A muffled response through a marble-filled mouth said, “It’s good to see you too. It’s been too long.”

“It’s arite, don’t talk,” I tell him. “I don’t want you should aspirate on my table. Essen. Sounds like you’re talking into a sponge.” I waved my hand in his direction.

His brown eyes sparkled over round, crimson cheeks and they said, “Thank you.”

After Mr. Santa Clause finishes his giant piece of cake, he says, “You probably don’t know why I’m here.”

“Everyone else’s iceboxes in town was empty?”

He laughed robustly with his hands on his belly. I couldn’t tell if it was his beard moving, or one of his chins.

“Can I have another cup of tea?” He asks me.

“Be my guest.”

“I already am your guest.”

“Not until you qualify that statement by getting you a cup of tea. So nu, Abramowitz, what is it?”

He looked back towards me from the samovar, still facing it.

“I want you to kill me.”

I choked on my tea. I tell you, it gives me agita when people say things like that.

Solomon, with the good natured laugh, of course.

“Solomon, G-d forbid. We shouldn’t know from such things.” I tell him.

He smiled a little less, but still maintained one of a more wry disposition.

“We know from such things.” He says to me, stirring his tea, distantly.

“You mean...?”

“Yes. It’s back and this time they say it’s not going away.”

“I never knew you were so unhappy, Solomon”

“Abey, I’m not unhappy. I’m not depressed. I’m happy. I’m at peace. I have beautiful children, they have beautiful children and all of the sudden it’s beginning to look like I may not get any younger.” He smiled.

“There’s so much to live for though. It could get better. Science gets better every day. They even have a pill now that cures restless legs. Restless legs! Imagine.”

“Abey--”

“The problem with that one, is that it causes gambling addiction.”

“Abe--”

“That’s okay though. They’ve got a pill that cures that too; what are the odds?--”

“ABEY!”

“Sheesh, what? Can’t get a single word in with this guy...”

“It is not curable. There is no chance. There will be no miracle. This is forever.”

We sat in silence. Sol’s not eating. I preferred when Sol was eating marble cake. Such a small piece, I should not have given him.

“Sol...” I begin. “You’d maybe like another marble cake?”

He smiled. Mamzer. Always with the demands and with the complication.

“Abey, of the guys, you have always been my best friend. You are wise. You are more compassionate than you are willing to believe and you’re smarter than you look.”

″Mamzer!” I tells him. “Even when he’s asking me to kill him, he’s still a putz!”

Again with the laughing. Always with the laughing and the chuckling and the snickering. Always with the look of empathy. Like a basset hound, those eyes.

“Please, Abey. In all seriousness. I am suffering and the doctors can’t do anything for me. Since Cheryl died, I don’t have anyone to ask. It’s not going away and I can’t fight it anymore. I have no regrets, no sadness, but I have to go.”

Whatever didn’t happen or happened, I’d rather not discuss. You can use your imagination.

I helped to carry the casket. Each of us picked up a shovel and began to pack the dirt into the grave.

As I tossed dirt in over the presumed body of my friend of 40-some-odd years, I had to try very hard to restrain a chuckled as I imagined the epitath, but I couldn’t. I fell onto the grave, laughing so hard that it brought tears to my eyes, while onlookers turned towards me sympathetically.

I still see that headstone clearly. It read:

Solomon Abramowitz

Loving husband and father

Founder of Abra HVAC

Professional mamzer

Edit: I am not really sure if I understood the rules. Was I supposed to write about the color gray, the way people are doing? Because I can rewrite this.

I’m the wind that whispers in your ear

And beckons you to follow

I’m the moment that’s worth living for

And makes life too short to wallow

I’m the carriage road with brightly colored leaves

That have laid down in the fall

I am the hearths and homes and wreaths

Your heart’s true beck and call

I’m the painted smile of the clown

That frowns when makeup’s faded

I’m the selfless, inward, silent frown

When in the depths I’ve waded

I’m the one who would die selflessly

But who does not know how to live

I’m the one who will apologize

When I’ve no dignity left to give

I’m your fatal dose of venom

I am Dionysus

I am Puck

I am the madman on the soapbox

Who no longer gives a fuck

I’m the crumbled $20 bill, you forgot was in your pocket

I’m your keepsake, I’m your ornament

Your heirloom and your locket

I’m the one who shouts, “Revolution!”

In a crowded city square

I am the allocution

Before the hangman kicks the chair

I’m the portrait of the paradox

The picture of enygma

I’m the minister unorthodox

I’m far above the stigma

I am scorpio rising

I’m flowers and I’m menses

I’m everything you love and hate

I’m derangement of the senses

I’m the sky

I’m the sea

The pirate

The padre

The poet

I’m made for you and you for me.

Take my hand and you will know it.

I wish I wouldn’t have asked if it was you. I was thriving off the mystery of the unknown. Something about the uncertainty seemed to lure my mind into the fantasy I was creating.

I guess I just really wanted it to be you more than anything else. I hoped that the words that I read were the words that you wished you could have said.

Maybe it’s because I’m good at making myself believe the stories that I want to be true, and God knows how badly I wanted him to be you.

My mind still wonders how he could’ve known the things that he did. How was he able to describe the stories that your eyes tell mine.

No longer do I eagerly await him in my feed. His profile only drips disappointment from who he turned out to be. How could I’ve been so foolish, green and naïve.

I didn't know as a child, but I would grow to live my life in most people's moral gray. As an adult I live that way now, and it completely changes everything.

How you present yourself:

The way you walk.

The way you speak.

The way you dress.

How much information you're willing to share:

Do I bend the truth?

Do I flat-out lie?

Do I speak the reality of my life?

The legality of it:

Can I get insurance?

Will my marriage always be legal?

Will I get denied housing?

But the biggest question of all:

Will we get attacked?

Will we get attacked?

Will we get attacked?

Will we get attacked?

black crows peck at my corpse

skeletonized remains alone and forgotten

struggling to wash pure with gallons of tears

memories branded and seared into breast

hollow throbbing bones collapsing in ruins

black crows peck at my corpse

dissolving into puddles of rancid death

unfolded particles of grief and sorrow

trudging paths of sharpened pain

digging into wounds, praying you’ll hear

black crows peck at my corpse

my feelings packed beyond last door

unraveled like a threadbare sweater

neglected and held in contempt

erased from deep depths of darkness

black crows peck at my corpse

abandoned and invisible in my corner

fading into grey world of oblivion

tiptoeing on silent padded feet, as I

pull blade of scorn from bleeding chest.

black crows peck at my corpse

“I am still here!” I scream

begging you to blow air into lungs

so I can inhale your essence

but I plod on, lost and alone.

I saw the doors come into sight

I saw them open wide

I was awoken when I felt the light

I turned and stepped inside

The doors slammed shut behind

There was no turning back

I opened up my mind

No light shone through the crack

I followed a rainbow trail

Towards treasures then unknown

No pot of gold, not even a pan

But still my mind was blown

For all along the journey

And all along the way

I saw all that lay before me

And knew I’d have to stay

I saw your face today and barely recognized it.

And despite the lack of longing I felt at your features...

I still ached from the lingering feeling of your thumb running the length of my spine. Your voice still whispered and caught in the silence between my ears. My hands still hovered at your hips and the nape of your neck just before my fingers knit themselves into your hair. Your breath sat lead-heavy on my lips. And my teeth wished to scrape deep fissures across your collar bones.

And hello, have we met?