A break from work or school or anything
is a vacuum of everything I
already know: Holidays move
farther away after the fact or closer still before,
depending; a few minutes or an hour or
a drink or two devoted to everything.
The drive home is about 8 albums or so, a flatline
through Ohio and Pennsylvania.
If cameras still had great flashing bulbs I’d be up early the
next day sweeping glass out the door hoping the cats
didn’t already hurt themselves – the new kitten I
haven’t seen yet. He was “traumatized” and
Boo! is his name.
It was/is supposed to be easy. It’s a vacation,
really. Bring the buds home to empty house for
Thanksgiving break.
The whole house I realize is much too large for the
three of us to live in we just
spread our sobriety thin over
the hardwoods, the teeming ashtrays, the thawing
turkey.
They have as
scattered parents as I, so we all feast
and smoke and drink and talk and sleep
over at my place for the weekend.
The coffee tables will never be the same I dream
at night fretting, alongside an
unfinished resume or a sleeping girl
whichever haunts me least.
But when you let one of your friends drive and you take the legless seat in the back with
the car’s only working speakers you know, you know you’ve
never been this happy.
Because happiness
is soul music or a cigarette
regardless if you and your friends are tense, still
learning how to love each other. Regardless
if you aren’t happy, if you’re ears are running
with blood from hip hop or
whatever’s on next.
Getting back to your other home is like
stepping into an unfamiliar room in the house
you grew up in. This time though there
are electric pianos, beer cans and indoor
pumpkins, roommates having sex, laughing
and playing the electric pianos and stomping
on the floors.
Attention: You are now 510 miles away from
the 10 lb. turkey you bought completely frozen
at 2 p.m. on Thanksgiving that you thawed by Saturday and
decided you didn’t want to deal with the guts
so you left it whole for your mother.
The woman at the
register, the bagger and the shopper who called my
friends and I out for being stoned shitheads
were all together softly laughing at us,
cracking easy jokes as we waited for the credit card to ring up,
as I realized there is absolutely
no difference
between a resume and a frozen turkey.