How was the service?

He was crying.

Busted eight ball eyes hemorrhaging tarry decades of dammed up shame and festered meanness. That scratchy granite face I’d always assumed was, long since, bled free of moisture or emotion, was, then, drawn into a rotten peach skin, oozing syrupy nectar like coagulated dream stuff and over fermented hope. I watched through the keyholes of my own mind; hidden, safe, spying my own dysfunctional definition of strength and stoicism melt like the ice cubes in a cheap glass of well whiskey. Like watching the sun drown in the ocean, or seeing vultures pick at the crucified Christ. That standard of ‘what a hero should be’ bleeding out in my arms on the snaky weirs of a mental jungle my heart had built from old Viet Nam War movies and a few treks through the Brazilian rainforest. Sad; I know. But, what else does one do when faced with a shattered lifetime construct; what else does one do, but find a fantasy great enough to water down the ache of naked realization.

He was crying. I was disintegrating.

And, of course, she was there, too; lying in her comfy gray box, refusing to console either of us for the first time. He had always been a prick of a brick, and I was made wholly in his image. Two stony cubes, now robbed of the mortar that held our universe together. Without that sweet, loving cushion, we’d become all frictional sparks and stormless thunder, knocking together like two seagoing barges cinched together too loosely. And, on that specific afternoon’s micro-Armageddon, any hand or heart stupid enough to reach between us would have been severed and sunk into the unfathomable darkness that is human male pain. She had finally found a way to be there without being present. As, the black moment bloomed in my shaky belly, I actually envied her.

He was crying. I was disintegrating. She was dead.

Everybody else seemed fine; commenting on how lovely she looked, what a wonderful woman she was and munching those little finger sandwiches people make when you die or get married. They were like a frantic hive of directionless bees fussing over the carcass of their beautiful queen. I just wanted to exterminate the cheery lot of those buzzy, bizzy jack-wads. A moment of humble silence, even for the Matron Saint Dealing with This S**t, seemed too much to ask. I could feel every hidden shard of resentment and loss closing around my throat like a noose of fire woven into shadow. So, yeah, it was lovely. It all went quite well. And, aside from the fact that my entire understanding of the world was being boxed up and fed to dust, or crumbling into a pile of alcoholic man-rubble, I think I handled it well enough.

He was crying. I was disintegrating. She was dead.

Everything was just f*****g fine.

Reviews

[roarke]

It's like rolling down the car window to stick your head out only to find it's not a car you're sticking your head out from, it's a lear jet. ...
The first paragraph is wide and fast and grasping, a gutsy way to open a piece about emotions, and life and death and family and sudden realizations.... I would have no idea how to do that, it's gonna take some by surprise and make them think. Let 'em read it over a few times to get it to sink in.

The second paragraph, family, the end passage where the curtain is raised and you watch the stage being struck. Sometimes the lucky ones see it for what it's been for the very first time. Rich prose here, just right.

Third paragraph, my favorite, excellent writing. It takes the emotional abstract from the first paragraph and brings it into mortal focus for everyone else, by the throat. A Michelangelo "Pieta" of a paragraph.

What puts it in a poetic-ish format is the He was crying, he was crying I was disintegrating, he was crying I was disintegrating she was dead progression. Nice touch, but could have been attached to each paragraph instead of separated... form call nothing more.
The last line, the clincher, fit's with the tone. Ends it and opens it at the same time.
Personally, I wouldn't touch this one with a rewrite, it's the way it's supposed to be and if you got lucky (via talent) on a first draft, .... well we're all allowed an occasional "hole in one" now and then.
Beautiful piece.

[Kenneth The Poet]

This is like somebody swallowed a whole bottle of Xanax before they reached for the tequila. Nice job!