It's those cold moments that creep and slither under the skin of happiness that haunt. They haunt like reluctant ghosts. They haunt like snow on the ground on a cold day. It's those moments where you're playing. Then you're play fighting. Then you're just fighting. It's the quiet moments after the thunder, the moments behind slammed doors that you start wondering where the feelings you feel come from. Are they new, something coming from a bad day? Or, are they old, festering like mold or a wound, seeping into the corners of your mind and heart for months? Over a cold beer and a cigarette, you sit and pummel yourself to find the answers. They don't come. They'll never come. Happy birthday. Welcome to passive-aggression 101. It's when she doesn't order you the drink you said you wanted. Besides, all you really needed is a cigarette… Shoes don't seem that important. They are. They make you think you can run far away from the gentle sobbing you can hear on the other side of the door. You didn't mean to hit her. It was a knee jerk reaction. You are sorry. You're sorry you took off your shoes and now it feels like you can't leave. You never thought about shoes before. Now, it's all you ever will. It's the moments when you say how you feel that are worse than the moments you don't. It's odd how either light or dark can blind you. It's the strange and rare moments in dusk or twilight that we all seek. It's when the sun rises or falls when we could be truly happy. It's the moment when a misunderstanding, simple and small, makes a rift that seems insurmountable. Heated stares and chilly words with icicles hanging from their tips are exchanged hastily. Sometimes it feels like being on a small boat amidst a great roiling sea with a savage storm caterwauling and clawing at the defenseless vessel trying to drown it for its own reasons. It's the moment when the silence betrays more than words ever would. Even on a phone on a cold night. When one small thing, a wish, a desire, a hope, comes to burn a tedious paradise down. Razed. Charred. When going home won't feel like it will in the movies. It'll feel like dead man walking. Like gallows. Like a firing squad will be waiting. But it won't really be. She'll be asleep and that's worse. Then it gets to fester. Like a sore. Like a cancer. Tom Waits' "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart" is playing and the cigarettes are waiting patiently like a well-trained pet. Somewhere in the back of my head a mantra-like prayer just keeps repeating like it was a broken record. I pray no one feels like me. Ever. Bad poetry is on the tip of every one of my fingers. The music takes the place of any easily understated emotions. I don't know if I want to cry or sleep or drink. It's only been this bad once before. That was for the better. This…this is I don't know what. I just want to clutch my fist tight and hold on the life I used to have. I'll probably crush the life clean out of it if I tighten up any more. Tindersticks starts playing now and my chest seizes up. Something soft and vulnerable gets stuck in my throat. I swallow hard twice and it slides down and settles on my heart. The prayer recycles itself and Spiritualized "Baby Stop Your Crying Now" comes on the radio. I start thinking of someone far away and my breath feels like it weighs something impossible. I think of sand in an hourglass. I think of water slipping through dirty cracks in a sidewalk. I think about the stem of a wild rose. I can't stop wringing my hands nervously. "Ruby Tuesday" by the Rolling Stones now. The cello part burns its way into my brain. I thought I could do this. I thought I was a Strong One. No., I'm not. I thought I could stand and weather this. I thought wrong. It's the moment you wait for for hours. It's sleeping on an uncomfortable couch and waiting for Her to come out and tell you it's all right. Come to bed. Let's share the sunrise. It's the moment when you wake up where you fell asleep and the sunrise is just as lonely as you knew it would be. It's the moment, the spilt second, the sharp gasp before the bullet hits the bone. Fast hot metal pulps tender insides made warm and vulnerable over the years, the armor worn and chinked if not gone completely and willingly and stupidly. It's the moment that's been long coming and seems so fucking obvious that it blindsides you without a hint, a clue, a warning, a subtle whisper. Just a loud bang and the promise of a puckered scar that reminds you for the rest of your life that pain hurts and it was a lesson you should've known, but you had to learn.