[could] [cloud]

there isn’t anything i could say that would make this better.
i could try.
i could assure you that you’re not alone, in the face of all observable evidence to the contrary:

that you’ve been home for eight months.

that you’ve barely seen your friends and family from the upper chest down.

that it’s so. just so. so quiet where you are.

that days pass where you might as well be orbiting Saturn in a can.

that you are.

i could toss out those brutal clichés, light as tennis balls to throw heavy as cinder blocks to catch, those verbal ways we bite our lips to keep ourselves from saying “I care, but not enough to get creative”:

that it’s always darkest before the dawn
(yeah, like six hours before the dawn)

that when a door closes, a window opens
(what kind of fucked up house do you live in?)

that i’m always here for you
(lot of good that’s done me so far)

that i know how you feel
(it sucking for both of us does not reduce the degree to which it sucks)

that if i can do anything, just reach out
(you never answer my texts as it is)

i could try, i really could.
if i could only get out of bed.

there isn’t anything i could say that would make this better.
i can’t even try.
i can’t improve on the promises and the potential that for far too long we’ve only caught in untouchable glimpses but that now, finally and impossibly, approach:

that science isn’t fiction.

that objective reality is both instead of neither.

that character means more than just one step closer to the end of a tweet.

that there really are experts among us who aren’t deep-pocketed donors or late-night infomercial salesmen.

that we can adapt.

i can’t write anything better than what all of us are already reading, i can’t speak sentences that all of us haven’t already finished, i can’t write checks worth more than the ones we’ve already cashed, and i can’t giftwrap anything we haven’t already hungrily begun to tear open:

that dawn is finally breaking
(yeah, the sun’s been in my eyes for a while now)

that we have a new opening here
(and for once i don’t want to jump)

that we won, and it’s okay to celebrate for a while
(already drunk, hungover, and drunk again)

that it will be hard work
(make america read again)

that things will get better
(once the future catches up to the present)

i can’t try, i really can’t.

inability in ability.