I'm looking through the aisles for something that will make me feel better, consumer therapy on the cheap in the 50% aisle. I'm answering the phone and not hanging up so you can tell me everything that you feel, so that you can distill in 2 minutes what used to be 24 hours. I am going far away with nothing to show from my quest when I get back. I have learned to turn off my brain when people talk and when the miles start to take their toll. If I listened to you, no one else cares. My drugs and my drink and my crutches and my lack of self awareness and my lack of self honesty and really, more like, just my lack of self. All I am is pixels on a screen. All I am is these words. These words don't need to listen and not hang up and still try to be polite and feel that slow, slow build of wetness to eyes when frustration wins out and you're given a backwards movie preview of what your movie used to be. Because that's all it is, movies. Scratchy voices scratch from vinyl scratch scratch, I'm on the porch late at night, beer in hand, door at side, smoke in fingers, laptop on lap, words in head. I promise myself every night, this night, I'll be asleep before 11, but then again, I get home after 11 anyways. I stay out late and keep no one waiting any more. Sing it with me, "The piano is firewood. Times Square is a dream." All night. Watching smoke curl around the evening sky and the moon play hide and seek. And no cicadas. They shut up finally. It's quiet, save for the hum of the streetlight shining down that I know I will never stand underneath even though it's close enough for me to touch. So these words fly out of my fingers like beer out of a green bottle made in a cave. I want to stand on the street and scream my song but everyone else is in bed and everyone else would wake up somebody else and my dog is pissing on everything he can because he's mad that the world took his balls and then his teeth. He's who I talk to. He said you know someday, you might learn how to say just fuck off. But I doubt it. I've only known you a few months. And I think this is who you are and you like it sometimes. I wish you didn't. And then I wish I hadn't smoked so much, because now my fucking dog is making me think too much. So I give him a bone and he shuts up, because I'd never tell him to shut up. I'm gonna stay up all night, he said, then he slumped over in his chair and dreamed about someone else's life.

Photo - S
Words - S