no, May is the cruelest month April 30, 2024
Thirty Days passed September, April, June and November.
This is one of the short months, and unlike March, it went
by in a breathless rush, and I find myself staring into the month of May and the
long history of sad events that took place during the month of my birth.
How far back these negative impressions go, I can’t
remember, only those like thorns that made me bleed the most acute.
I do not look forward to my birthday as once I did, knowing
that there won’t be a new bicycle waiting for me when it finally arrives – that
year when I pleaded for one when all my friends in the neighborhood already had
theirs, and found one hidden in the attic a few days prior to the blessed
event, covered in a sheet as if such a thing could keep me from poking my nose
underneath.
I wore that bicycle out, traveling far and wide,
reconstructing it when it fell apart, pretending to be the Green Lantern as we
plunged out the door from my best friend’s basement to take on the ills of the
world.
Out in LA, when on the run from the police in 1970, I prayed
not for a bicycle, but for the reunion of The Beatles – that had announced
their breakup a few weeks earlier, an unrealistic wish I realize now, but then,
my life was full of hope and omens, we believing we could some how magically
influence world events by closing our eyes and clicking our heals, wishing for
what we wanted to come true.
I don’t know what I would wish for now, having been
disappointed so many times over the long years since that one year I got the
bicycle that I’m afraid to wish for anything, fearing disappointment once
again.
I could make a list, but it would not be valid because there
is very little left in this world that I would want so badly as I did that
bicycle, and if there is a reunion I crave, it is not of The Beatles (two of
whom have left this mortal coil), but a reunion of my best friends (we once saw
ourselves as the fab four), two of whom have passed away and will not return
except in memory (or perhaps in haunting), a wish promising nothing but
disappointment.
I guess I cling to this last day in April, wishing that it
was a long month instead of a short one, and that I could keep that last day
forever, like a relived ground hog day, only not today, but a today when there
were things still left to wish for and my friends still here to help me share
the good cheer.
Perhaps the poet was right when he claimed April as the
cruelest month, full of unfulfillable promises, yet, still as I did long go
when I ached for the Beatles to reunite, when I prayed to the bicycle I always
wanted, I hold out hope – for the impossible.
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