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It's my 25th birthday today.

I’ve got a song in my head

I don’t know what it’s called,

I don’t believe it has a name.

It’s catchy and I hate it.

It’s infectious, insidious,

It’s claws in deep, it’s wretched.

I’ll tap my foot while on the bus,

Slowly,

Amidst rows of other people,

Ticking their fingers,

Clicking their tongues,

To different beats of different songs,

Which they’ve all got stuck too.

I wonder if they’ve ever noticed

That some rattle out the same rhythm.

Every now and then

I’ll notice a face across the way,

Blinking,

To my toe taps.

Like this one girl,

There’s no way she could have heard me.

It was interesting.

Like a nervous tick she sat there,

Rapidly shutting the world out momentarily,

Desperately trying to forget the rhythm,

To think of another song,

Any other tune.

At least,

I imagine.

I saw another at the bar,

Prattling out the chorus with his knuckles

Against an empty glass,

Only briefly,

Before asking for another.

Every.

Day.

It’s the same damned song.

One, two, six, eight, thirty seven, nine.

I’ve begun to make up words for it.

Eat, sleep, go to work, gotta be on time.

Seventeen, two, ten, fifty, thirty four.

See the screen, watch the ads, 

Instill the fear of being poor.

Four hundred forty four trillion

Six hundred thirty six billion

Nine hundred eighty nine million

Forty six thousand and change.

I know I won’t ever be famous

I try but I’ll never be shameless

The direction I’m going is aimless

With all of my dreams out of range.

I see others, heads hung low,

Dragging a foot every other step,

Tapping their pockets in time.

It’s plain to see on some,

How long they’ve heard these sounds,

How many celebrations have been

Narrated by this drone...

Twenty two, thirty one,

Take forty five, sixty eight,

Two three four seventeen hundred wife?

I see some have given up,

Given in to resignation,

Heads bruised, walls dented,

Some mumbled sums falling through their yellowed teeth.

I see others that think it’s funny,

laughing at how it can be so bothersome.

I’ve seen them too, broken,

When a punchline didn’t come.

I saw something today though-

It frightened me.

Crossing the street,

Grinding out a slow bridge

Between my teeth,

A rock in someone’s tire tread

Providing a convenient click,

I saw a window open

And a man was there.

Or what used to be one.

As if he could hear my molars rolling

Heavily on one another,

He bobbed his head from left to right.

When he fell there was no moment of second thought in his actions.

He did not wait to be fully outside,

Presenting himself to the world

Before making a show of his decision.

It was as though,

Rather than crawling over the sill

He was crawling to the street below.

It looked so smooth,

So purposeful.

If it wasn’t for his calm demeanor 

It might have looked as though he fell,

Having tripped over something in the room,

And was entirely accidental.

I think it would be more appropriate to say

He fell

A long time ago.

Possibly when he got home.

He fell in the doorway,

losing his boots by the door,

And into the kitchen.

Jacket catching itself,

Hanging neatly on a chair,

He fell towards the fridge,

where he accidentally knocked a fifth of vodka

Into his mouth.

And he kept falling,

Towards his cat,

Spilling food into her bowl,

Then up the stairs he fell,

Plummeting down the hallway,

Knocking doors shut behind him as he went.

And in his room he fell so fast

His clothes flew off of him

And in the gust of wind he brought

Clean clothes were swept up

And he fell into those too,

Before,

Finally,

Gently falling out his window.

Maybe he fell before then,

When his job was automated.

Or before then,

When a judge ruled no custody.

Maybe he tripped over the body of a friend in highschool

And just never found his balance again.

I don’t know.

Paramedics were there quickly,

Vancouver’s best.

They must have been just down the street.

Still,

Before they got there

I got there.

His shoulder wasn’t where it was supposed to be,

And his elbow had popped across the sidewalk.

Still,

He was mumbling.

“Zero one double O ten zero zero,

O eleven hundred one zero zero,

Zero one one zero one one zero zero,

Zero triple one quadruple zero.

Double O one hundred thousand,

Zero one ten eleven zero one,

O eleven double O one zero one,

Zero zero one one triple one zero.”

I wish he fell farther.