die

(Play Jordans music below)

Love is a many sided dice. It can be cast and cast. The roller sees a side at a time. In the hand it is warm...the angles worn and eroded. It fits neatly in the palm, setting firmly between thumb and flesh, ready to fly. Tossed it brings excitement and dismay....sometimes at the same time. Each face well known except one. One in six becomes one in a million. But quit rolling and you cant ever know if you'll hit it. 1 is a letdown. 2 a quick death by betrayal. 3 is euphoria. 4 is a slow death by a hard heart. 5 is the closest we've ever been. 6 is perfection. Mine seems somehow to defy physics and land somewhere on the edges. Like flipping a coin for heads and landing in a crack. each cast is an opportunity , but too often the throw stays tucked and hidden in a palm sweaty with the grip of fear.
Part II
A hand covers mine. Its uncomfortable...immobilizing. Warm and stifling. It slides to the wrist and squeezes, relaxing my grip. The dice falls slowly and I watch. As each side passes in a relaxed fall the deep ingrained pictures and memories come to the front of my mind. Sharp shooting darts of letdown and cannonballs of solid anger pound my head in a barrage, taking all focus from the burning grip on my arm. The fierce heat grows from my arm and enters the back of my brain. The heat like a crawling fire works its way around my head. All of this pain and forgetting comes courtesy of the hand on my arm and not the artillery. The temperature makes me forget. Tunnel vision sets in and the bullets fade with the charred remains of the dense vegetation on the landscape of thought and memory. Forgotten and dead fears lie as ash and soot. The death complete from the intense hot.

Part III
A harsh and expansive wasteland of the burnt remains of my hurt opens in my head. I look down. The dice frozen in air before it hits. Talk about defied physics. The hand releases me finally. The heat not unpleasant now. It actually keeps me warm. I cant see the faces of the dice. Well I see them but it doesn't matter. I don't have any feeling associated with it. The letdown, the betrayal, the 'perfection. My past experience still vivid but lacking color. Black and white. Mostly white. The hand gives me hope as it picks up the dice...he has thrown it before. He throws it for me.