A few weeks ago I concluded I was no longer good. I realized the goodness inside me I treated as a petulent child, chasing it away with reproach and remonstrations. The days wore on as I thought on it and soon understood, being good (or losing it, in my case) mattered like some laundry gone missing. The loss of it is almost amusing, drastically bemoaning it to your friends or using the clever banality as grounds for calling an old friend. Recounting your favorite t-shirt that somehow you can't find. Don't you remember, you'd ask. You would press your nose in my chest, in that shirt and breathe in. Isn't it funny to think, you'd chuckle. Isn't it funny to think it was that shirt I've now lost? And she would laugh too, I bet. Timing her giggle to mimick yours, in no greater intensity, with no greater urgency. There would be the swelling sadness beneath the words, as anyone might expect. And you would say something about the time you kissed her on the stoop, speaking lightly and silly. What would happen then, my friend? Would your former love's voice grow deep and low, fingering the memory herself? Would let another giggle go? Would her man come in then and ask her who she is talking to?

Oh dear, and she'd hang up. Still the smile on your face, you'd sit by the window for awhile afterwards, and yes, you would brood.

The goodness I've lost is the direction and earnestness I never had. I've always felt strange in the skin given to me and now, naked, I feel no more comfortable. I suppose it is the transition in age, I suppose it is the booze or the girls or the poetry or the nights spent writing about booze, girls and poetry, but this past week, watching from a view point sleeping in the sunset, I saw my father and I walk in a kind of kinship I have never felt. Standing in my kitchen, I wanted to put my arm around him, love him and feel proud to be his son, to tell him. But I did none of these things. I scuffed a mark in the linoleum and looked up to smile at a person who is the best man I know.

But I'm still not good and I don't know if I ever was, yet I want to get back. I want to be the son to my father he deserves, not this creeping figure snatching chickens from roosts and returning them ruffled and faded. I'll get back. I'll return to the girl sleeping softly in a bed in the very early morning. I'll take off my shoes and slip in beside her, all scruff and ruddy skinned. It will feel like a night instead of years since I've been there and jostling her slightly, she will wake enough to smile at me, the lines from her sheets still fresh in her face.