He sits in the chair, alone, his skin bleeding. The blood performs to the melody of the buzzing of the tool in her hand, but all he hears is the sound of a fallen cocktail glass, breaking into shattered pieces. He realizes the irony of life; the searching out of meaning is juxtaposed to the never-ending wish that he can forget all that he has learned.
Some moments ago he wanted happiness. He would have done anything to attain it; howling shrilly for it, sobbing, in fact. No one answers his desperation. No one ever has, though he has answered for others’ cries. The intense sobriety of the realization is too much for any one to fathom for more than a few seconds. Some try to drink it away. Some smoke it. Others blow it. Still others sell it or buy it. But he sits in it for hours, days, months, even years, paying therapists to describe it for him. It does not go away, always rearing its ugly factual and analytical face. It is a beautiful face; when it appears in a painting or on a stranger across the aisle of the subway, or in the words of a friend, printed on pages of hope. Now, it only urges him to forget that it exists. Tattooing the words and memories on his skin, so as not to forget to forget them.
What would you do if I sang out of tune during a walk to remember that all you need is love? I am the egg man singing silent night over the river and through the woods to find an oxford comma. But it’s over the rainbow and I can’t find it.
And honestly, I doubt if there ever is or ever will be a rainbow.
He once told her that he entertained the ideas of suicidal contentment. She concurred with his ideation, though she pays bankers thousands of dollars for an education that ethically binds her to report such a discussion. She bought it but doesn’t buy it now, and wonders how she’ll ever be the kind of person who can help others when she can’t even help herself without becoming the need of others want over cookies and milk. Her therapist disagrees, but what the fuck do therapists know?
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