When the Fire is Gone,

what do you do?

Writing real things

isn’t easy

because

most things

are fake.

I had a dream last night

where I was having a fight with my first girlfriend

in front of the whole school.

I have never punched a woman, but in the dream

I was preparing to

and the whole school dared me to

and I wasn’t going to hold back

I was going to tackle her, and pummel her face in

hit the key spots

her nose

her boobs

all the places that would hurt

Then, I thought about it…

What if I lost?

And what if I won?

It was a lose/lose situation for me

there could be no victory.

What if she beat me up in front of the whole school?

Everybody would cheer

and I would be branded with humiliation for the rest of my life.

Suddenly, I remembered…

She had a black belt in karate

and I had never been in a fight.

She did Brazilian Jujitsu on the weekends for fun

She danced. She was good at many things, I had never tried.

I would have to hit her hard

Even with her skill and technical ability, she was only a girl, I thought

and it would hurt to get hit by a boy,

but what would happen if I won? I would be a woman beater, a coward, a nobody

prosecuted, and put in prison.

In my dream, I didn’t even know why

I wanted to fight a woman

let alone, my first girlfriend

There must be some symbolic significance,

but I’m not sure I want to know what that is.

I was doing air-punches

in preparation for the fight

awkward, spinning back-kicks

that I learned from watching Jean Claude Van Damme

Then, I thought about shaking her hand

to settle our differences

but I didn’t know what those were

My relationship with my first girlfriend

lasted two weeks

until I broke it off

It was boring

I hated three-way calls

with her other girlfriend

A three-way sucks

when it’s communication

I was listening to two girls talk

about their cats

Teenage girls don’t have much to say

they get old, and they don’t have much to say

all they were

was young.