By Comparison

We first met just a few hours ago.

Pointing to a faded scar on a thumb, telling of

teenage bravado totaling your dad’s truck;

and I gather it’s your big near death tale.

I meet your expectant too-casual glance

acting the appropriate level of awestruck.

Nowadays you work weekdays for your friend

while he takes vacations with the wife and the kid.

Your solitary weekends spent on home improvement projects,

“I’d get a dog,” you say, “if it weren’t for the gym after work,”

cause of course you’re gonna lose that “recently” gained weight.

Finally, you ask me a few automatic questions,

and without decoration I answer matter-of-factly.

A long margarita-sipping pause, you lean back and remark,

“Boy, your life’s pretty exciting!  Mine’s boring by comparison.”

Something about the way you say it…

My first thought was, “I haven't even told you the best parts!”

My second thought, “You’re quintessential middleamerica, I bet.”

But I stop at my third, growing uneasy and suspicious,

“Yeah, I know what you are, now.”

“Have you ever watched crabs in a bucket or barrel?”

I silently ask while stuffing down an enchilada.

Unspeakingly I persist through a dulce de leche dessert,

“Your proximate existence claws at my upward momentum,

drags me down to your complacent crawling towards

what-the-fuck-did-I-do-with-my-life deathbed regrets.”

We finish our coffees and give good-bye back pats,

each knowing the other would soon willingly forget

as we drive opposite directions out of the parking lot.

After all, you felt sucked down to the barrel’s bottom.

And I felt like an escapee scuttling back to the ocean. 

        ~Volpini Amentum Arete Anemone