"I'll call after my love for you is dead."

"I'll call after my love for you is dead."

Rat bastard! she knee-jerked to his parting words, using a phrase she never before used in her life. She wanted to say more but any more words would be too dangerous. Did she really know everything she needed to know?

*********

He'd hurt her drowning in a mess of falling tears. She was not perfect, but their love had been. But to keep it alive he must step into the light where no lie can live - and no lie can live. In arguments against the moon, he flailed false convictions demonizing the light he knew to be true, resisting its dreamy call as an "impractical delusion". No daring love for him, he'd rather be considered a Man Of Reason.

How very unreasonable.

He'd started inching, then pulling, then running away as the dam burst with imagined fear and death. Rocks of false mockery he'd flung against her tender, precious body. Too afraid to step into the light herself, she never saw the demons he fought, failing to call out his shameful motives. Yet, how both so anxiously begged to come clean under the sun!

Dying in chains of which he held the key, the Kingdom Of Heaven lay a forbidden paradise. Unable to deny the truth he now recognized, he pleaded instead not to recognize the existence of truth itself. That only made him more stupid. Terrified of facing the flower of love he neglected, he called defeat upon himself, she his Waterloo, leaving her with only his last stinging remark of destructive intimacy.

*********

[DALLAS - Zebra mussels are like the zombies of the water - you can't kill them... and then they take over.

The invasive species crashes fish populations by hogging nutrients and then they attach their razor-sharp bodies to boats and docks.

"It's mind boggling how bad this is."

The North Texas Municipal Water District decided it would pump zebra-mussel infested water from Lake Texoma to clean Lake Lavon so it could meet demand for its 1.5 million water users.

"We're in a tight spot here, but candidly don't see any other reasonable and practicable alternatives [to permanently fucking the environment]..."

Experts say doing that would spread the infestation into Lavon and other lakes. "A true tragedy."

Once infested, a lake is lost forever. Only one chance to get it right. Better recognize your brother, every one you meet.]

*********

She courageously remembered that fond Spring - that magical, wonderful Spring! When on a warm wet afternoon the blinding optimism of burgeoning life saturated the thick humid garden air consummated by an approvingly streaming sun. They had laughed and loved and forgotten the world, discovering paradise within - the only place it can ever be found. Stray white clouds hung in the sky in bidding to their whims.

Then he shyly confesses at the end of a shared laugh: "I'm funnier when I'm in love."

It was one of those rare, longed for moments when reality's definition sharpens into focus, wondering how one could ever had been so blind. Never did it seem so true the long echoed lyric, "Life is but a dream."

*********

[Their wicked, wicked ways had caught up to them at last. The mad king they'd foolishly let rule over them rousted from office by an angry populace desperate to be led to the promised land. So much damage, so much healing needing to be done - these things must be recognized under the sun.

But must they give up their way of life to reach heaven's gate?

The new king spoke out against the damage done, crowds cheering in teary approval. At long last, a savior had come! But he did not lead them into the promised land. "It's their wicked, wicked ways they truly want," he wrongly surmised, losing the chance of a lifetime and an epoch.

He kept them in the wilderness with a clarion call to hope, the king charming them in a slow composition of mutual corruption as eyes shuttered once again, imagining themselves in paradise despite their obvious pains, swaying them to give up the good fight just as he had done. And as they believed themselves saved so did he. "If they think they are in paradise then I must be the savior!"

Nothing left do but kill the prophets, torture the truthtellers and hide the tears of grieving mothers.]

*********

He swooned at her helpless radiant smiles, gifts to him more magnificent than the sky and the land and the seas. That was me that did that! Childhood dreams popped back to life, sunshine in his pocket. Even in typed correspondence his dancing demeanor was clear as day to her.

She was happiest when she remembered the truth of these fateful facts though she had trouble sticking with them as the Offically Authorized Story of her state.

She'd felt as special as chosen Moses, communing with God on Mount Sinai. How very exciting this love newly met but always known. "Ah, of course you'd be like that!" she find herself thinking. Had she stepped outside to the sight of a burning bush she'd been unfazed, leaving it to the hobgoblins of little minds to explain.

But she was off the mountain now.

Back in the whirling world of grasping idolaters, soothsayers of sly sin, proud proclaimers of perishable promise, the annoying rattle of minds in daily self-avoidance, and the eternal malaise of Man who ceaselessly learns but never understands, she questioned if she even belonged on the mountain to begin with. Suddenly she realized the commitment of Moses to make that hungry climb.

How to face one's Maker where no clothing is possible, alone with the naked truth?

*********

Crowded by uncooperative intruding thoughts, she slipped on the radio - only to flip off again when confronted by the suffocating overwroughtness of a wailing Barbra. But Barbra was famous and successful, a living legend. And just who exactly was she who drove in boredom down this colorless Texas freeway?

Dutifully, she flipped the radio back on. Maybe there was a home there she'd missed. Maybe she threw the baby out with the bath water. Maybe love was an illusion made up to please the stars. That made all these silly love songs made up too. She silenced the music once more.

Had anyone in a city of six million stories cared to notice, a curious soul may have peered into a large white SUV barreling down the road to see a woman unconsciously over-gripping the steering wheel while rocking in frustration as she obliviously vented, "Who am I? Who the fuck am I?"

In a flash of the ever changing currents of traffic she'd be gone, the curious observer abandoned to wonder why she did battle with herself. Probably the same reason we all do, one might suppose.

She failed to notice her passing admirer. Instead, it was one of those dreaded moments when reality's definition slipped away, sliding off the mountain with her confidence. No more mocking music she'd take, just the sound of cold winds of emptiness rushing through her ears.

*********

[He feared how he could still live upon a dying orb. The very old, the very young and the very unloved are the first to go. Moral and financial poverty spreads in unstoppable viral contempt, claiming new victims every day. But the poisoning ways of a stubborn and defiant populace are pried only from their cold, dead hands.

He too played his part in the insanity play.

Having lied in the face of love, his life disintegrated in vain pursuit of scientifically proving said lying valid. But no redeemable value existed. He'd fucked up, his actions beyond the reach of salvation. He'd traded real love for unreal arguments, leaving him to love as cowards are forced to do: from afar and haunted by a life unled.

Were they even to share an elevator together now, they'd still stand oceans apart. He dare not call her home (but must if not to remain damaged goods).]

*********

What now? What was this boulder under her mattress? Like a spaceship hit by an asteroid she'd been knocked off course. Whither the way home? Had she'd been on a vain shortcut after all? Why did she find it so difficult to do what she wanted, struggling against unseen winds? Had she ever been on the right path?

Damn these questions! Leave me alone! Am I indulging myself or does what I do have value? Am I cheating myself if I stop looking? I can't get these bugs out of my ear. I can't think straight! I want to know who I am when I'm with him. But all that is broken now.

Too many voices. Which one the fool's? Her most prized asset, her sense of self, wavered in darkness. Why did she do less when she knew she could do more? She needed to face him, to gain back that missing piece he took. She so wanted to believe her life had purpose...

Sipping her lonely cocktail, she sought to silence doubts whispering of a path unsustainable. She must do something. But not now! I can't do it now! Yes, later, sometime, it must be done. Oh please, leave me alone! It's too much for me to take. Not while I still got feelings. Not while I can still be exposed. I'll call after my love for him is dead.