Brian Eckert

I like your tattoo
It makes me look just like you.
We could be friends if we weren’t so similar;
My authenticity can’t survive you.
Actually, it can’t survive anything.
Nothing can.
Survive anything. What a strange idea: To remain.

Forever.

Don’t kid yourself, boy. You couldn’t handle it. Old things make you uncomfortable. A million of em just like you. Crippled midgets hungry for revolution. Thinkin America is just a fart on a string.

Nothing good can come of this.

Have you ever smelled human flesh burning? That’s the scent of Empire, boy. A tin of spearmint snuff. Makes the eyes water.

Paranoid? I prefer “thorough”. It’s what keeps a man…a family…a country…together, safe, strong. That’s the problem with people like you, boy. You expect some neat ending. A precise explanation of what it means to drag a dead, naked gook through the mud. You’re obvious—boring, even. Your want for things to change masks that.

Just wait 30 years. By then, you’ll be just like me, knowing that there’s no such thing as starting over.

Cynical? I’m just tired, is all. A cynic couldn’t think of something like this:

There is a Presence Heaven can’t touch. Deeper than Night. Softer than Silence. Closer than you ever thought possible. Never to be seen again.

Not that you noticed.