the loom of leisure

Don't treat me like some situation that needs to be handled / I'm fine with my spite / And my tears / And my beers and my candles / I can feel you smoothing me over

Yes, I got your letter / Yes, I'm doing better / It cut deep to know ya / Right to the bone / Yes, I got your letter / Yes, I'm doing better / I know that it's over / I don't need your closure / Your closure / Your closure / Your closure

I know I'm just a / Wrinkle in your new life / Staying friends / Would iron it out so nice / Guilty, guilty reaching out across the sea / That you put between you and me / But it's fake / And it's oh so unnecessary

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.