Slow Bus to Florida

I have three wives and five children.  They all hate me and have an uneasy truce between each other.  The wives look very similar to each other and I suspect that they are sisters.  I realize one day that I am a man and that I also happen to be a royal asshole.  A super douche bag.  Except I never realized this until just now.

My wives and children are leaving me.  For how long I don't know.  They are all taking a bus to Florida and have told me to straighten up my act.  Maybe they will come back.  Maybe.

I go to hug my second wife and am crying.  I love you I tell her.  I say I am sorry for all the grief.  She punches me in the balls and tells me sorry doesn't pay the fucking rent.  She pulls away from me and mutters about was a sorry piece of shit I am.  I love this woman.  I love all three of my wives- desperately.  I love them and I am an asshole.  These are the things that descend on me- the epiphanies as they are leaving.

My oldest son is solid.  He keeps his room padlocked whenever he leaves it.  Even if he is just walking into another room, he locks it behind him.  He cooks meth in there and has a large cache of guns.  I am afraid of him.  I have raised him to be this. This is all my doing.  As my son gets on the bus with his mothers and siblings, he glowers at me.  Touch my room and I kill you he says.  This I know is not an idle threat.  He will kill me one day.

They leave.  The bus pulls away and I am alone.

When I wake, I am myself again: a 41 year old woman living in Maine.  My hair is braided back and each strand hurts.  I want to shave it off.  But I won't.  The hair are antenna that pull in these other lives in other places not here.

Dreaming/Thinking
watercolor on paper
22" x 30"