white lines painted over cheeks--immaculate ethereal pillars; drawn smeared across your eyelids visceral, carnal bars. a collection of tiny mirrors with frosted glass & golden frames adorned the surface of cheap metal rods. parts to a black rodent's cage. white walls streaked grey from dripping water & steam aided in destroying material junk i threw at them, like catastrophic sheets of snow & ice. bruising, shattering, tumbling onto dusty floorboards. piling into rolling drifts of dripping clothes, rusting garden tools, torn legal documents, splintered wood & splintered furniture. frigid. i could always see my breath in fleeting puffs. wintry.
recall nail-bitten fingers probing & pushing, sweetly stroking shallow skin stretched tightly over a beating, pulsing ribcage. i felt like i was only ever watching films from a vault. i saw it happening, & i never really felt it, but i heard it echo in my ears. a loving gesture reduced to the hollow sound of knuckles rapping timidly on panels of a distant door. finances, emotions, relationships, humanity, reality--amounts to nothing more than far off sound & chaotic, muffled din. don't even try to reach me; all words have lost their meaning. self destructing & forgotten in a dark & tepid tide.
rolling shoulder over shoulder from my twin sized mattress into smells of hazy weed smoke, stale beer stains, liquor lining kitchen walls, bic's blazing under burning tinfoil. coat sleeves & thin sheets sticky with sweat had wrapped around the both of us, & i dragged her halfway down with me. paused, lying still, my stomach on a spread of broken down cardboard boxes. my fingers dragging along sickening smooth paper parts, washed with...
the narrator's voice speaking inside my head right to my hostile little face. "yes, these
are bruises from fighting. yes, I'm comfortable with that. i am enlightened."
you were awake. my buckled knees drove me to the corner. you were watching. i drew out seven lines of orange & white powder on the keyboard in my room that wasn't mine. you asked me:
"what are you doing?"
"fixing breakfast so i can go to work."
silence responded & i--newly numb, awake, asleep, refreshed & worn--walked away & left you lying in my bed. locked the door behind me in the same clothes i fell asleep in. lit joint pressed flat between my finger & my thumb, i wanted to smile.
& you never saw the works.
