Etiology for a Dinosaur

Maybe you once told me that disappointment haunts your whole horrible life. It follows you, state to state (state lines were said to rid one of an affliction of such glaring phosphorescence). You tried every remedy but that damned panacea was nowhere to be found. It started with the cleanse – you let it all loose, gave back the torment and regret to the daily harbingers of disappointment. When that didn’t work, your mind was aflutter with chaos and circles. There were too many mandibles munching away at your ego’s lifeline for a refund. Next, to my dismay, you went to the pseudoclassic witch doctor down the avenue. Blood-letting. She drank your body dry and smoked every word you breathed and you died. Only for a few seconds, you were swimming in the ocean with the belugas and became a cloud-man, everywhere at once. The vile of your blood she kept as a souvenir glistened a glittery black-red as you came back to my world. I watched as all she took from you flowed back into you – your toes and fingertips wiggled and squirmed and I watched some more. “You can’t keep doing this,” I coaxed. I can feel the disappointment around me, taste it in my sleep, & feel it holding my hand. (fingers laced) I could see the disorder controlling your life. It was all you lived for, sickening. But you, the fighter you are, the Triassic beast, would not idly let it obliterate or debilitate (though, as we all know, the disease was impairing everyday functioning). Where’d this come from? Your last blast and a half of optimism came in the form of an exorcism (Church approved). Though I no longer had any hope, I mustered up every ounce of power I had to make it happen. The things I would do for you, the love I could force upon you, if only you gave a heathen like me a chance but no longer is caring enough. When the exorcist arrived, the lights said their farewell & you braced even the tiniest fibers of your cold-blooded corpse for the expulsion of Disappointment. He burned your forehead with his crucifix and wrapped your left hand with a rosary, praying. Preying. I’ll be different from now on. I can feel it inside me, know it in my heart, and feel it in my brain. Only three days, fourteen hours, and seventeen minutes later it reminded you that it was not finished with you. The disappointment returned and you wept dinosaur tears for days. That was how long I stayed away. We sat down again and I said “I know the cure.” Speak for yourself. Dinosaur. Dinosaur. Disappointment Dinosaur. And we never did find the cause of his disease. We only tied it to the thinnest of yarns, hoping it wouldn’t break – but when the day would come (and I knew, but Dinosaur didn’t) I was relatively ready for the extinction.