This is 40

How many times now have you recited the same dialogue with your family, a vestigial reference to an organic moment of joy with them from ages past. Now though, this dialogue keeps the demons at bay, keeps it all from spilling forth because you don’t even know what will spill forth, but whatever it is, you have been storing it up behind linguistic dams since you gave up on growing. You’ve got a family now; you got married; middle-management with great benefits; yet, here you are an actor playing a role that becomes you. The wife didn’t come this time. They want to delve deeper into why, but you put that in a box and locked it and threw it into the raging current that you glimpse in the darkest of nights. Time for the questions about the kids. Brats. But they are angels according to line 3 on page 4, even if you notice the side glances and pursed lips that have increased in severity over the past few months. May have to add in a line next time to bypass those improvisations as they don’t fit into this paralyzing modality. Filters; airbrushing; back to that one joke that makes no sense but made mother laugh once. Sink further into the couch; yawn; you are tired; could use a nap; problem with napping though is that one must eventually wake up. It would almost be time to go though, if you napped now that is. Hmmm, a little weird for a grown man to nap at his parents house if he is only there for an afternoon; okay, coffee instead. After being handed the coffee mother brewed for you, you sink into relieved oblivion when father finally turns on the football game. Finally, time to forget for a while. If only you could never remember; that would be ideal. Oh well, stock that up in that dark closet that terrified you as a child. All things go in that closet; eventually, even you too will slip into it. That looming reality fades though as you watch a couple wander along a beach full of joy after the husband took a pill. Ask your doctor if an early death is right for you. An hour has passed, and an hour yet more until the retreat back home. Come quickly hour of your departure, come quickly.