You tasted sugary sweet. Not the perfectly-ripe-strawberry-that’s-been-warmed-by-the-summer-sun type of sweetness, but sweet like an artificial sweetener that’s bound to give you cancer and leaves a weird aftertaste in your mouth.
I told you all about this one night on the stumble home from the bar. You looked bored while I explained my musings, then shrugged. You told me that everything gives you cancer and that aftertaste would just ensure I’d never forget you. Like I could ever do that anyway.

I've tried writing in ink, but it seems so futile. Anything I write down on paper will inevitably get lost, be tossed out, or simply deteriorate. I need to remember who I am, who I was.

Lately I'm scared to sleep again. Scared I'll wake up to find things have fallen apart during the night while I wasn't watching. My legs hurt all the time now. A consequence of growing too tall too fast, or is the weight I feel real? Is all of the shit I'm carrying pushing me into the ground? This load is probably more than I can bear.

train

I feel like I'm on a speeding train and I want nothing more than to jump off. I'm scared. I'm looking at the ground flying by- the blurry pattern that half dead grass and tracks make at two hundred miles an hour. I have no idea where its heading, or if it'll ever even get there before the whole damn thing derails. It just keeps getting faster and faster and I almost can't see the pattern anymore.

This is all too much. This is not enough.

Tell me a story

“Tell me a story.”
“Excuse me?”
“Tell me a story.” She repeated slower this time, lifting the small black stick up to her mouth.
“A story?”
“Yes.” Irritation made her voice raspier. Or maybe it was the cloves she was chain smoking.
“What about?”
She sighed. A deep sigh of disappointment. Or maybe it was just her lungs trying to draw in as much unpolluted air as they could before she lit up another cigarette. “About you.”
-----------
She just suddenly materialized in front of me one day in line. I have no idea what the line was for, I just know she was there- making a scene. She was good at making scenes.
There was something frightening about her, but I think that whatever it was that sent my body into a panic and made every nerve scream, “Run,” also made her undeniably alluring. Physically, I know why I was so drawn to her. Everything about her was slender and stretched out, giving her a feline-like quality that was only enhanced by the fact that her eyes were large, round, gold orbs that burned everything within their sight.

The weather today

When you try to mend the broken past and they all just turn away- grind your teeth until your jaw hurts almost as bad as your heart.

When he comes around and all you can think is "I'm gonna get fucked over." and everyone echos "You're gonna get fucked over."- pour yourself a shot. Nevermind its barely after noon. Repeat next time you talk to him and make it a double after you see him next.

When you see her fall all over herself- roll your eyes. Then when you realize you do the same- finish the bottle.

When you start to understand everything you ever create will be nothing more than medicore and common- rip up your notebook and cry yourself to sleep.

Home

Right now you're on your way back to a family that never gave a shit and are only making plans because it's the "proper" thing to do. And when you get there they'll wash your hair and comb it away from your shut eyes and paint your face up like a china doll- rosy cheeks, porcelain skin. The suit they dress you in will have to be new- all the old ones left behind in the attic will barely cover the track marks along your long arms.
There will be a short viewing where estranged relatives will all pass by and murmur false phrases about how you were a "fine boy" and how what happened was "such a shame" to your parents who will graciously accept all the feigned sympathy. And on the long drive back to their hotel they'll shake their heads and say to one another in hushed tones how they always knew you'd end up this way.
Yeah, well, you always knew it too.

Nowhere

Her eyes fly open, fixed directly on me. Looking, but not seeing. Her pupils are so large I can barely make out a thin ring of dark green under the translucent gloss that covers it. Her breathing is disturbing to me. Rhythmless, ragged gasps. Her body thrusts up against mine, but she's not trying to get closer to me. She's not there. I shut my eyes but I can still hear her struggling to pull enough air into her spasming lungs. I'm not stupid or vain enough to believe she's in the throes of ecstasy.

My eyes fly open when she pulls me to her and screams. She's back. I'm never sure where exactly her mind goes when I slip inside of her. What she's seeing. What she's feeling. But I'm sure that it's something dark that makes her eyes glaze over like they do. Something that would terrify me if I ever asked and if she ever told.

...but you're in my bed tonight

As soon as I saw her arms I wanted to cry. They were exactly as you had described, in abstract terms of course, but here they were. Real flesh and bone and ink. All of your favorite things, mentioned in passing, were there. The shapes, colors, the proportions. All along you were telling me that what you wanted, that what you liked, was her.

"I wrote you a tune about your dead lovers,
don't worry my dove, you'll soon have another."

His breath is a dead giveaway. He's starving. His body is eating itself, trying to keep him alive. Fat being broken down into ketones until there's nothing left but the soursweet smell.

She's nothing

It was the first time I had ever seen her completely naked. Of course I'd seen her body, she'd showed me all of that the first night we met. But this was different. She was completely bare of everything but her: No clothes. No thin blue sheet hid her. Her eyes weren't even lined in that .thick.black.line. that just screamed "Do not enter." Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

I didn't love her nearly as much this way.

Meditations on 2007

1. My room's filled with dozens of shelves all lined with tiny boxes filled with (probably) hundreds of envelopes packed with to-do lists where nothing gets crossed out. All my good intentions and blatant failures packed away in orderly chaos. Circling and crushing me. The past pressing down, squeezing away all hope for the future.
   
   
   
2. All these bridges I've burned could light up this whole fucking city.
   I know I can do better than this.
   
   
   
3. I live for sensations. For experiences. I want to make my life into something that will be remembered. But I don't know how successful I've been in making my life art. There is a kind of empty weariness that comes on when I drink too much and have too many shallow life-altering conversations with strangers.
   
   
   
4. Left. Thud. Right. Thud. Left. Thud.
   This is all there is. Feet slamming against concrete over and over.
   
   
   
5. I want mixtapes, kisses in the rain, poetry and sweet nothings written on flesh, Jimmy Eat World and warm October nights in your car.
   I want all of that, but not from you. I wish there was some way to detach all of those fantastic moments from the reality of you. Some way to transplant those memories in to more fertile, less polluted ground.
   
   
   
6. Deep breath. Hold on tight. Here we go again.

Wish

I wish I could know what it was like to be inside of, completely enveloped by, you. Sometimes when we're lying together, I think it might happen. That if I close my eyes really tight, so tight that everything goes red with bursts of light, and concentrate hard enough, I can melt into you. That my body would just give way and my soul would slide into yours.

Dancer

I should have been a dancer. Or at least that's what everyone says. That I've got the perfect body for it. I -do- look amazing in tights and a leotard. But I'm not a dancer, I can't dance, not one lick. When I tell people this, they get this simultaneous look of pity and disappointment. Like me not being a dancer is a personal affront to God. As if, because I'm not a dancer, my sins won't be forgiven. I'll never go to heaven. All because I don't dance. Sometimes I lie and tell people that I -do- dance. That jazz and tap are my passion. They still look disappointed, but it's good enough to get me through the pearly gates. They say I look more like I'd do ballet. Got a graceful neck and walk- like Audrey Hepburn . She was a failed dancer I say. Did you know that? They stop smiling and walk away.

At least I'll have Audrey to keep me company in Hell.

"You don't taste like anything."
"What? What the hell does that have to do with anything?" I'm gesturing wildly, really that's the only way to describe what I am doing. Arms flailing, hands twitching. She's trying to break up with me again. This happens every couple of months- sometimes we can make it longer. "Taste has nothing to do with me not understanding you, which is what you said this was all about." She did this every time too. Her complaints and reasons for those complaints would shift throughout the discussion until she was just spouting random, unrelated, self-perceived facts.
"No, this conversation is about why I don't want to be with you."
"So, because you don't think I taste like anything, you're trying to leave me?"
"I'm not trying. I am going to leave."
"That's bullshit. You don't make any sense. I mean, do you hear yourself?"
"I'm leaving because of what you not tasting like anything represents to me."
"Represents, eh? This isn't a book. This is our life. But go on, what does it represent in your mind?" She sighed and looked worn-down. I half expected her to disintegrate on the spot.
"Your lack of passion for one."
"Oh, so this is about sex? I told you I would do whatever you wanted. If you want to do a girl together we can..."
"What? No, I don't want to do another girl with you."
"Well then what is it you want? Am I boring you?"
"Yes, you are boring me, but not in bed."
"Well hey, that can be fixed. What kind of things do you want us to do?" This is where the tide always turns. She would start talking more, really opening up. And I'd reassure her- that I loved her, that she was beautiful, that I wasn't going anywhere and that things would get better.
"No, it can't be fixed. You're not what I want and you never will be." And she left. She left her clothes, her toothbrush, her tupperware. She left.