Lock and Load

Some days the sky seems set at the wrong angle. The days that get shorter. The days when you sit on the dock while all your regrets wash over you at once—a breeze that's soft but somehow doesn't feel right.
   You remember nothing but what you don't want to: Standing on Treasure Island looking at the city on a flawlessly clear winter night, just before everything got irrevocably bad, talking about the New Madrid earthquake and well-intentioned architectural foibles, his mouth close to your ear, his arms around your waist so you knew nothing could move you, nothing could make you want to move.
   Men in work clothes will always attract you more than others.
   You wonder if walking the rail between the piers and falling in and neglecting to come back up would count as on purpose. Your left leg falls asleep and it feels better than anything ever has; it makes you want to weep.
  Today in the skies you have seen a blimp and five supersonic airplanes. You suddenly want to crash a DC-3 into the side of a mountain and walk away. Live, but never be found.
   A sign on the rotting pier says Danger. Keep out. Trespassers will be prosecuted. The pier is like a North Dakota plain covered in asphalt, dotted inexplicably with seagulls.
   You wonder if it would be more effective to say Trespassers will fall in. And drown. And be eaten by fish. Trespassers will be trapped between the pilings and wave in the tide, turning the color of seafoam. They will become luminous, their hair will sway like kelp. Eels will live in their skulls, poking their heads out of eye sockets like snakes in old TV westerns. Trespassers will become picturesque. They will become integral. They will no longer wonder where they belong.