Mixed Messages

I read what you wrote in that notebook the message you merrily scrawled Someone such as me who has imbibed reality’s bitter brew couldn’t help but be appalled by such a short sighted notion though I’m sure you meant well “It will all work out” you said That wasn’t the case for me though I worked my ass off to earn a scholarship and a degree to escape poverty now over forty still working for minimum wage instead of on the stage as I’d hoped to be or the man down the street from me murdered recently in his bed with a single shot to the head by his new lover’s jealous ex boyfriend dead simply due to who he chose to date or my best friend who met her fate at age fifteen a drunk driver unable to differentiate between red and green The two beauty queens who both plunged to their deaths from the balcony of buildings The pregnant woman whose pelvis was crushed when the hospital in which she was to give birth was bombed begging those who rescued her from the rubble to kill her when she realized the baby within her womb wouldn’t be born alive but I am sincerely happy for you that you’ve been blessed with such bounty in your life that you could believe those words to be true