Pivot

I find life to be ever-pivotal. It is the end result of happiness, the cusp of rebirth.

My theory of pivots began its evolution in the skipping of a heartbeat, when I almost fell over the safety railing on a playground platform,

the way every muscle tensed,

 my eyeballs straining in search of the answer the future holds,

 my fists clenched,

all as I teetered momentarily on the brink of normalcy and perhaps splitting my head open.

Terrified. But I was fine. Pivot.

I met it once again in the drumming of my heart as I revealed final lotto numbers, skinning the ticket of that scratch-off material as if I were trying to start a fire. Although sometimes performed leisurely, rolling old coffee around in my mouth in pretension, knowing that my fate was set out before me like a clever hand of cards, so why rush? Either way, the thrill was the same. Winning numbers. Two bucks. Pivot.

I found it again in my father belongings, snooping through his stuff, like any bored teenager would. His garish collection of geometric ties he never wore could have shocked me, alas, they did not. Not even a small Karma Sutra guide shoved behind books about UFOS and the KGB should have given my heart a leap-- nada. Although I was presented with disgust, coming across an empty package for those dick pills you see hanging at the gas station that had names like “Weekend Prince” or “Rush”. I gave up my search for booze or pills or whatever interesting scrap that would have satisfied me and turned to the internet, oh save me.

Instead I found it in some casually displayed webchats, the tab not even closed. Click.

There I found check-ins and I-love-yous, and some rather descriptive depictions of cunnilingus. It was also not my mother. Bolts shift in lock and turn away to reveal an answer. The key of which neither of us wish was produced. My fate was already held deep in the silence of his heart. It was in that moment that those pivots in my life had never happened, having shifted in firm grinding ooze.

For the tears made sense now, and their fights weren’t going to

work out.

My head had split open on the hot black top.

Must have lost the lotto.

Yet, fate’s only language is time.

And somehow in that moment,

The tongue of that mouth had

Split

Worming its way down my throat

Forcing me to choke on the fact

That nothing will

Ever be the same.

Pivot.