Purposeful Humans

Idling at a red light,

I turned on the radio to the local jazz station,

and they were running an ad

for a university near the city, not quite in the city.

A woman, the dean, I think, said this:

Here at (I forget the name of her university),

we pride ourselves on raising the next generation

of purposeful humans.

After the commercial ended,

and the Herb Ellis track started playing,

I turned to you

and asked what you thought they meant

by purposeful humans.

You said it was obvious.

Humans with purpose.

I felt there was more to it.

The term purposeful humans implied,

even by your own definition,

that there were humans

without purpose.

I told you that it sounded like a shitty thing

a neglectful parent born in the sixties would say

to a child pursuing a liberal arts degree.

That’s very specific, you said.

They just mean that their school develops graduates

with direction and a sense of purpose.

I disagreed.

            That’s not what they said,

(I missed the light change to green

while saying this)

and even if they did, it would still sound shitty.

            How? You asked.

            It’s belittling.

            To who?

            Those without direction.

            And you think that you’re one of them?

            Why? Do you?

You probably rolled your eyes,

but I didn’t see because mine were scanning

the road ahead of us,

the red lights of the vehicles in front of ours.

I never understood how your side of the car was destroyed

while mine was left mostly intact.

Or why your airbag didn’t function correctly,

but mine worked perfectly fine.

Last night I stared at an empty beer glass

until I felt like breaking it across my face.

I know that’s not good. But it’s okay.

I didn’t actually do it.

There was a cricket on the patio.

I thought it was in your potted fig tree,

but I couldn’t actually see it. For two days,

around the same time, it made annoying,

loud noises.

I picked up each stone in the planter

and shifted the entire tree around,

until the cricket went silent.

But as soon as I stepped away,

the noise came back.

I doused the tree with a bucket of water.

The noise came back.

I dumped a second bucket, a third,

and so on,

until my arms grew sore, hands soaked and pruning.

Your fig tree is now overwatered, and the noise is still there.

I don’t know what I’m going to do.

I think I killed your tree.

When the sound of rainfall outside

makes its way inside our bedroom

through the cracked window by the shelf

of good houseplants,

I think that I’d be happy dying.

Anytime. It doesn’t matter.

I think it’ll be a relief. I know

that it’s probably just because the sound of

rain is too nice. It drowns

out any notion of the fear,

pain, post-mortem implications,

but I still feel that way,

that I’d be happy dying.

The sound of rainfall is really something.

Everything else,

it’s just so heavy. I’m tired.

Maybe I’ve been thinking too much about death

to feel this way. It’s not

just something you say.

Hey, you know those nights

when the rain makes you want to die

because of how nice it sounds outside your window?

That’s not normal.

I learned at a young age that life

was going to be a long and drawn-out

deadpan dustbowl of dry mouthed occurrences.

Antiquated loneliness.

Withdrawal from sunbeams.

I saved your fig tree. It’s not dead

after all.

I keep seeing skydivers in the backyard,

but when I look up, shielding my eyes

from the sun, I never catch the planes.

I spent an entire day watching for them,

but then I didn’t even see any skydivers.

I’m renting a place in Oceanside now.

I need to find some purpose.

The only time I get out these days is when I need to buy more beer.

And when I turn on the jazz station, the saxophones

become sirens,

and I have to switch everything off for a while

and try not to think

about my purpose.