I was furious, completely screaming in the car at the "alcoholics" who dared to have a wine festival
in the park, and blocked off the swimming pool where I intended to seek endorphins, relief
from the painful thoughts that my head was swimming in, the anger, rage at my soon to be X job.  
Today was graduation day, but I was not there to smile with other teachers and administrators I hate
and I couldn't do it, luckily I don't teach seniors
Absolutely enraged at the quietly joyous celebrations around me,
the happy smiles, and blissful walks people were having heading to the festival,
I sought out a lake I had heard of where I could derive some endorphins from a that swim
My phone GPS lead me to a dead end and a dusty trail, beyond which lay a fetid green pond a glimpse of a larger lake, so I set out with my 50 pounds of swim gear, along the dusty path behind a housing development cursing and raging against the world.
And then, a beacon, a parking lot and cars backed up and I was there

I've never swum in a lake before and it was cold, and I couldn't see where I was going
I saw no fish, only green dusty water and some dead looking water plants
but the swim served it's purpose and I wandered back to shore as a water creature
walking to a strange new world
I boldly put my towel underneath the lifeguard tower and lay as the lifeguards
kicked sand onto me, and I read "All Quiet on the Western Front" on my phone
I began to feel as a soldier must feel, that my little comforts, the shade of the life guard tower, the book, my over stuffed bag as a head rest were the supreme comforts of life,
And when I bought a heaping pile of Nachos and the guards kicked sand into them,
I continued to eat and swallow sand, and save them by my head as I read.
In and out of the green depths and I noticed the people around me, mostly not white, mostly Mexican, and one girl, with long black hair who was one of those girls that make me understand
how men can fall in love with us.  She was so beautiful, so perfect, with white skin contrasting with the black of her hair and clothing and if I wasn't straight, I would have been smitten
She was with a rough crowd however, and later I saw her, standing around the back of the bathroom, looking so vulnerable, a priceless flower among tough, although stylish characters
no good will come of this

I became drunk with the sun, and on my way back, I was again imagining a speech I'd give to my oppressors, in my alter ego Southern accent.  
My feet were hideously dusty, but the way back was clear and when I arrived home,
I realized, graduation had come and gone, and I was safe and one step closer
to freedom

His hand was outstretched, nabbing a pesky windswept hamburger wrapper
near a garbage can alongside the exit to the cafeteria
Bent over, exposed, frozen, pretending the hamburger wrapper
required more effort than normal to dislodge it from the open air just above the ground
Perhaps it was a turnip or a beet, that he had to carefully, surgically remove
and it was only that he saw me coming
if I could have slowed down time, to slow motion
Seeing my boss, the principal of the school, up ended like this
for the sole purpose of not having to look me in the face, I would have
more kids would have had a chance to stare at this strange posture,
and wonder how a hamburger wrapper could have such a difficult
time being removed from the ground and I want to remember this pose
it only gets worse, and as my exit comes nearer, I feel lighter
but he still can't look me in the eye
if he felt secure in his decision, in all his decisions about me
he could, but he doesn't
So he will focus more time than needed to grasp that delicate
wrapper, which contained a stale bun and the remains of a dairy cow
spent and gone before her time on a factory farm in the central valley
and if insecurity can impose such ludicrous postures on a person
I will take this lesson, and remember always to be brave

I look for love here
the only place I know to look where
love doesn't exist here
Never existed
but here is where I looked for it when I was so young
and it's the only place to look: the love place
in a man who has better things to do, more important people to see
the love place a little girl looked at for her whole childhood
now in a man who can't deal with her, doesn't want her

It's like waiting at an abandoned train station
where no trains come or go,
and you can hear them at the new station
but you come here
because that's where you've always come
and that's where you grew up
always looking down the track
hoping the train would come in and you'd have that endorphin
rush and every so often it would and for a day or so a train ride
and then back to the empty station, waiting
feeling sad, because you want to ride again

The power, willingness, energy of another train
on a different track you see it
and people get on and off and go on their way
but I stay put, trying to love him who can't love me

Sometimes in my life, I drew a deep breath, and hoped against hope
and closed my eyes, and let go of my fear
and I joined the people at the train station
where trains actually still come and go

But it's always been a round trip ticket
and back I come, and wander off again
to the empty, falling apart, spooky, windswept station
where there is no life, no love
but it feels like home
and it is dead

And my tormentor, my soon to be X boss, he flew back to the midwest
where his dead brother lay and it must be a terrible thing
and I know he didn't die suddenly like my cat, with the benefit of a relaxant and then
anesthesia, and then a heart stopped, because it kept beating past the point of where
the body could keep up, and the door to the next world opened up to him

And I know this person's heart didn't stop suddenly,
there was pain and gasping and desperation as the heart attack took hold
and a life flying past his eyes and falling and finally a comforting white light

And it's the living who grieve, including my soon to be X boss
who grieves now, naturally, this man who has tormented me and
taken the pleasure out of many days like mud wipes across a windshield
and I always thought, as he contentedly read his computer screen staring
into that as if it was a window to the next world and held the answers to all
creation in it
I thought, he never suffers, only I suffer.
The cold people never suffer thought I as I looked down at the latest bruise
and ached and found a slow way out
but it's not true
they suffer, he must be feeling the pain I can't imagine, the loss
and fear and reminder of mortality and the void that can't be filled,
but only by time.
And he is in this void, somewhere in the midwest
perhaps fielding calls about who he wants to replace me
and he suffers, he is not immune

"Thank you for saying Happy Birthday to Shimone"
my mother said and I kind of said oh, no problem
and we went on from there to argue since that is what
we do and she will never know who I am
and I assume she meant Happy Birthday on Facebook because I
certainly don't keep track of her friend's birthdays,
especially not her friends who live in Haifa and remind
me of my X

Upset, I ran off to the pool, hoping for endorphins
after some laps  I rested at one end
and realized in a kind of slow, creeping way,
kind of like fog rolling in over the cliffs at Muir beach,
Not menacing, even beautiful, but a little cold, that
I never wrote anything to Shimone, not even on Facebook
No, I've been too self absorbed to write to my parents Israeli friends who used to
have me and my X over for Shabbat meals where I used to insist
on walking up the stairs since the elevator was small and hot and scared me
but he always wanted to ride in it
and one day we went over there was a sign on the apartments next door
that a woman had died in a terrorist attack the other day--
When a suicide bomber, afraid of the security guards at the nearby
mall, ran into an Arab restaurant conveniently located at a gas station
where all the best restaurants are,
and blew himself and everyone inside up
CNN international came for a day to report and then left the next
like a rude house guest who comes for your best food
and then dissapears, never to be heard from again

With my X, my mother always got cards she loved because he
knew just how to pick them and he'd send them without even telling me
sometimes faking my signature or
I just had to sign and he'd do the rest, in between crank calls to them at all hours,
taking advantage of the time zone.  At once tormenting and caring for them
as he did for me

And now is he a ghost in my account?  
A ghost, a fog, a memory, something ephemeral, not real

He can just walk away
say "uh-oh" as you cry
run over your feelings like roadkill
again and again until they're smashed into asphalt
have become one with it
can just walk away and you beg him not to go
that things were supposed to last longer than this
and you are sorry and please
he leaves anyway and you never hear from him again
but you don't know how they feel.  don't know, if they are happy

My X kicked me back here, to my home town
I thought it was his greatest revenge
Every crack in the sidewalk was a painful reminder
of the years of silent suffering with a smile pasted across it
I call growing up and
as I'd the therapy habit now, begun in LA and
reinforced and practiced in New York in the Therapist infested Island of
Manhattan
I got one here, and strange things started happening and
the sand of the filthy beaches started to sing to me and
my old high school looked like a pleasant nursery
and I started to groove here again,
feel strong here again like I'd never had
and I learned to love
my home town
after 500 years of therapy