Auctioneer Sneers Across the Crowd.

The hope is that you'll be sold and we can all move on from this ordeal. Towards something worth it. Towards something else entirely. Like wine pouring form into a vine. The steak forgetting the steer. The stake laughing at the tree. The castle weeping for the quarry. The soil forgiving the corpse. The idea giving way to the unimaginable. Left alone, these are the things of dreams and longing and feelings unrequited; peeling away to reveal some of those lost in the woods. Tears streaming down their faces, hiccuping in the ash of the autumn, carving a pumpkin with a knife like a prayer. The salt flow washing the dirt from their cheeks as a slap would; that hope that you will be sold. I don't know what you became when you slipped on that suit coat and sold that used car. You are a retired boozehound with nothing left. You are a man with hulking masculinity all shriveled and useless. You lull and sway and mince words to the surprise of the support group you attend. You try to remember the raw materials that you are composed of. You try to remember what you were, what formulated your current self. You want to forgive those that came together to make you what you are: a retired boozehound with hopes of selling yourself.