Proper Semicolon Usage

Everything is gray and lost and spinning all the time and when I think of you, when I think of all of you, my head twirls and is dull and I can’t keep a straight thought on my mind. If I could live in these words I surely would. I write to remember. My legs are weak and the bars on my sides close down. I walk the street and cut the fog. Memories race each other like thoroughbreds that I never bet on. I always lose. In the din of the crowd, in the shine of the noise, I stand there waiting and longing because it is only ever a thing when I make it a thing. But it never really is. Not truly. You take his hand and he takes yours and I watch you stroll off into the waiting night. I am jealous. Jealous and bent and wanting such a thing. Streetlights shine and the asphalt glimmers. The rain is on the cusp. That feeling when you know, it is heavy in the air and we beg for it sometimes, welcome it to wash us all away. Fresh starts are rare and we beg for it. Semicolons frighten me, but not as much as you frighten me. The parking lots are full still, cars devoid of people still enjoying their time. I lean against mine and smoke a cigarette. Thoughts wander like the coming drunks. We are stable and then we’re not. We are honest and then we are more honest. We are alone and then we are still, only, more alone. The stars shimmer something mottled and dry, obscured by clouds, covered by light. The smoke and the ash rises and I look up hoping for something to come down and drive everything away. I put my dreams on far away planets, my love on dying stars. If I ever wrote you it would be in letters. Not prose, not poem, not post-it notes. In letters I can feign some kind of accountability. I can play like it’s not really me. Names are faked and lives are forced and all is fine until we say it’s not. Dear So and So, it is hot here and I am tired and remember that time on the patio when we played cards and drank and the black widows scurried away because they hated the whiskey I threw at them. I am afraid of the spiders, but they are small and we could have ended them. But we played, like children in the sand. They lived and so did we. The letters are vague because they’re meant for everyone. I will not write them and you will not expect them. After a moment, when the tobacco is burned away, I will get in my car and sit there with the music turned loud, an engulfing storm of things we never shared (there should be a semicolon there, I feel, but as aforementioned I am afraid of them. I could search the proper use for them, educate myself on the how’s and when’s of acceptable semicolon usage, but I don’t care enough. This is the theme of things. Passivity of proper semicolon usage. (name your future band that) parenthesis within themselves. [That’s a good one as well] now it’s just too much punctuation to keep track of, but the path lies still and we follow it blindly) I do not drive, just sit. I think of calling you, I think of you often, but extenuating circumstances dictate that I should not and, consequently, I turn my phone off and throw it in the back seat. I will never make a better decision than that at this current moment. You will agree. My hands are clammy and no amount of sanitizer will dry them out. I am nervous and scared because the future is something I cannot predict. Try to and tears will fall from my eyes. I cry more than any man should cry. I cry for you. I cry for us. We long to be old because time dictates that wisdom comes from lessons learned, from experience shared. I am in no hurry to find that finish line. I know you are not either. But we will get there and when we are old and weathered and our children are playing on the shore we will think of times like these, when we were afraid and unknowing and the future was something fierce, a grizzly beast on the horizon. We will look back knowing that we defeated the unknown, masters of the scraggly beyond, like sages in the mist. But for now the car is here, the doors are closed, the sound hits hard, and, just for now, we will allow ourselves to feel fear and that is okay. Because we will love and have our day in the sun.