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By Misti Date: 2003 Oct 07 Comment on this Work [[2003.10.07.03.23.2850]] |
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i was ashamed once upon a lifetime ago when my half-Cherokee grandfather held onto me drunk and crying saying my parents would get back together even though they had divorced more than six years ago and were happily remarried to Barbara and Dave i stared out the window at a Frito Lay truck parked on a residential street and i wished myself out of my body because i was scared and sad and didn't know what the fuck to do i had never been clung to especially by a big grown man i thought to myself this is just sad this is pathetic once i break free from this weird embrace i will never look Papaw in his eyes again then there was my Uncle Buzz drunk on the Fourth of July goofy as hell in a birthday hat holding a lit Roman candle in his hand i did not understand why he was welcome in my family he was a loser who never got to see the son he lost to divorce he was always drunk and joking i looked at Buzz and saw a life wasted everyone said in his younger days he had hung out with his celebrity friends and was swarmed by more women than he could handle he could have gone to law school but he became a rodeo clown instead and he was so good-looking in his cowboy hat in all the old photographs but now Buzz is overweight and living in Seymour where there is nothing to see but cattle and Dairy Queen and pumping jacks and the Brazos and the occasional tornado dignity once sounded poetic to my ears hearing Whitney Houston sing about it sent chills down my back i would grab myself some dignity and never look back to see if the shame police were hot on my heels but there have been too many moments of blood and clown face and I'm Sorry(s)and begging on dirty knees too many Please! I'm an Orphan episodes with bad violin music in the background too many drunken embraces and blabberings of my own never again can i judge or look at another dignity free human being with disdain twisting my lips in a sneer at each tear, each incoherent mumble i am a jumble of shame at thirty dirtier than Cinderella on a spring cleaning Saturday afternoon if i don't die soon someone will have to kill me and bury the toxins deep. |