Magic Trick

One day I’m here, a lonely heart floating in a sea of formaldehyde. Preserving my confidence, preserving my smile, preserving my mask to conceal my inner storm. My mind is an ocean of sunken ships and nameless bones. Clanking against one another screaming to be noticed, but whisked away. I used to look in awe as a magician would saw their assistant in half, but after you left I saw how easily you could saw me in half, take away who I once was. Make me half the man I used to be. I can do magic too ya know? Watch me disappear. Like a dandelion seed blown in the wind, here one minute and gone the next. No one hears it drift away and when you turn back around it’s already too late. Abra Cadaver, I appear in my bedroom lying on the floor, a hole in my head like open sesame, the smell spreads next door to smack the neighbor in the face like alakazam and just like that I am gone. Another statistic, another number, a contribution to the already too high percent of dead gay men in this country. In a matter of days I’ll just be a memory, in a matter of weeks I’ll barely be a memory, in a matter of months I’ll be that person you once knew, and after a matter of years poof, like magic, I’ll be gone and forgotten.