I walk proudly, with my chin squared and my shoulders back;
heavy boots crushing the pavement as I stride.
I don’t look left or right,
though my mirrored glasses let me stare as openly as I want
at anyone I pass, including the two young minimum wage employees
closing up their restaurants in the East Village,
one a Korean woman with an open face
and the other a Mexican boy with obvious wariness, maybe even distrust.
There’s not a single thing stopping me
from turning a corner to find my wife waiting,
nothing stopping me from slugging her,
nothing stopping me from breaking her neck
with my wiry thin arms.
I wish I could say she’s done something
to deserve my enmity,
something concrete that could have caused this deep-seated feeling of betrayal,
something to earn the inevitable crushing blow I will deliver.
But no, she’s perfect–just not for me.
This is no murder mystery.
This is no farce, no satire.
This is a rebellion against the post-colonial laws of love.
Laws these two citizens know nothing about,
each one too young to have loved and then lost sight of that very love.
I’m too young myself, a miserable youth, a mizer of the heart at 25.
I am damaged goods in the most classical sense, unloveable and wild, hurt and lashing out.
I have been occupied,
my feelings opressed by the savagery of marriage,
my inner natives slaughtered by a trick, a trojan horse of the heart.
Smallpox blankets delivered unknowingly to my stronghold, my sanctum, my fortress, my castle.
I thought I had an enemy in love, but I was vanquished from within by my own disease.