The Biggest Jokes

1.


Beauty
is skin deep.
They dove right in
the shallow end
and twisted their necks—
still we all want to be their friends.



2.

That night by the seaside
they got drunk
out of love for vice
more so than each other
and he ranted scathingly
about the human race
as though he were truly
detached and superior.

She retained nothing
of the conversation in the morning,
but he remembered.
He remembered every last God-damned thing.

After she passed out
he grabbed a stick,
headed to the shore,
and wrote her a love-letter in the sand,
using all the sweetest words,
without a trace of bitterness,
during low-tide.

When she arose achingly
in the morning, he was gone.
She gazed at the high-tide
that stretched closer to her
and felt inexplicably haunted.



3.

Long after the boy
was given pills
to aid his mind
they gave him pills
to fix the damage
the first pills did to his body.
He kept the second pill
in his wallet for a special occasion.

And once in the summer,
on a camping trip,
he left his wallet outside the tent
without knowing
it was going to rain all night.

He awoke to find the second pill dissolved,
reduced to chalky nothingness,
and his brain was at least intact enough to think,
quite rightly,
“This sure sums it up.”