Love Drunk

Love Drunk (see in Gallery / Store)| Image by Bruce Harris

Seventeen years ago, our son was born, and seventeen years before that we were married. On both days, the trees were singing. If you stood still and listened, the chorus undulated, the sound all around, constant as wind blowing through the trees where the cicadas largely fed. Although today, one flew at me in a sort of inebriated sway, a cartoonish flight of body outweighing earnest wings, its intent as flawed as a roadside drunk clumsily sewing the requested straight line. It clung to my neck, then with a swipe, it clung to my shirt, both nectar-less stops. Flicked from my shirt, the traveler began sucking on asphalt surrounded by the lifeless husks of its kind. I’ve been there, out too late, wobbling from one closed bar to another, barflies shells of their actual selves, ending in places I shouldn’t have been. I’m glad those days are over. And I’m glad these days are still with you, our lives longer, our appetites slower, hungry nonetheless.