Dip his hand into the water and walk away

It takes an immeasurable patience — one among many virtues of which I had once thought myself incapable. Perhaps I was only temporarily dispossessed of them, because here I am, taking deep breaths and counting to ten... repeatedly, demonstrating such a keenness for at least the patience. Yes, at least that... at least that. However thin, threadbare, or illusory. Yes, my forbearance like a belly-dancer's diaphanous veil of many bright colors, drawn over my face so only the intensity of my gaze flashes through. My version of the crying clown, I suppose. "The lap dance is always better when the stripper is crying," they say.

At last! Alas! I am a dreaded cliché. Which one, you ask? Which else? That lone silhouette on a solitary horizon, forever staring into the distance and watching for someone who will never come into view. So is this my new low, when my life could be reasonably related to Christina's World? What, like your life is such a Rembrandt? An amusing diversion, actually, postulating which artwork your life best resembles. These days? American Gothic or its ilk. Those days? Those days. Something a little less Rockwell, a little more Beksinski — something dark and interesting. You were the pride of two Poles, Bukowski & Beksinski... sounds somewhat like the name of a circus... but I digress... and now you are the sorrow of two poles apart.

Small world, I know, and getting smaller every day if you believe everything you hear. There is more than enough of it for both of us, but it would be easier if you did not stay so far away. We are being somewhat selfish in spanning such a great distance between us, in fact, half the eastern seaboard serving as our own badly-charred bridge. If space is merely a device to prevent everything from being in the same spot, maybe I should not feel weight of separation like an anvil on my chest, but I do. So like that dark stain on the canvas, I watch the horizon in restless anticipation for the figure that must be lurking just beyond the borders, and do my best to let him stand there for awhile.