Human Dividends

I was sitting with my right foot tucked into my crotch and my left knee propping up my chin. Surveying the carrion the day had left. Vultures in every thought. Dead things howling inside their stomachs. Lullabies for sleeping alone. Or with the things that only love you back when you're lost in them.

With things that pluck the life from your skin one hair at a time. But you never feel it until they get to the last one.

I was sitting the same way I am now, but there was a difference. A deadline in his voice that indicated there wasn't much time before this chair. These walls. Were the only things that would ever know who we'd been.

I never thought he understood me, but I did think he'd made the most effort. To see the words not as they were written, but from where they came. The trick is I never expected much from him.

The secret was.

He knew this.