I have the car filled with free gasoline. All my clothes are clean and still inside it. I have enough food and drinks to get me to somewhere. Yet I sit here on my couch. This is the part of the trip where I hem and haw. Because I know I have to drive away. I know that I have to get out of this town. I know that I can't show my face around these here parts. But a part of me wants to stay here. A part of me doesn't want to face the honesty and the music. A part of me wants to say that all that I own is mine, but the lizard part of my brain knows that that could never be true. If you feel that way, everything will slip out of your fingers.

I wonder after I come home shopping, does the fact that I have all the shampoos I need now, the body wash, the conditioner, the mouthwash, all clean and gleaming...my house cleaned and smelling of incense, the carpets all vacuumed, do I feel any better? Or is all the shit I pile into a day a way to fill the wicker man? And we all know what they do to that guy.

Sunday morning 9:10 AM. I used to hide in the bathroom or on the couch and talk. Now, I sit here and I compose symphonies of click click click !!! that will get read and become destris.

Out there in the kitchen is the full dishwasher. I think I'll feel whole again when it's unloaded. Or maybe that Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch that I got on credit that made the trip back with us will assauge my ennui. I have two sweet pickles floating in the jar and maybe I'll have those too. After the cereal. Way after. That ain't a good mix. I read yesterday that you can put Kool-Aid into pickles. Why anyone thought this was a good idea can only be attributed to meth. But that said, I'll try it. The pickles, not the meth. All that mouthwash was bought for a reason. If I ground my teeth down, I'd be wasting it.

Today is rack focus. When the you looks where you are and the foreground and background simultaneously go away all at once and all at the same time, leaving you center of frame, pushed and pulled. That's what they told me today should be. But really, I'd rather today be a day of sitting on my comfy couch and making my brain shut off and riding that couch like a ship into the sure seas of sleep and silliness and a lack of care about what happens. To not care while caring more. It's a precarious balancing act that will involve two cats, a dog, a high wire, comfy shorts and walking around barefoot for as long as I can. Because tomorrow, I will drive to somewhere I don't want to be. And right now, I am overjoyed at where I am. I just want to stay here, I don't want to leave here.

But like I said, I'm gonna gas up that car. I'm gonna turn up the radio loud to cover the sounds of the engine being shot. I'm gonna mail all the letters that I have in my drafts folder and not give a fuck. I'm gonna not ask for directions and just know that this is where I needed to go. I'm gonna do all those things and change it all, but for now, now, now, I want to sit here and just pet my dog's head and look into his eyes full of the unconditional love that never exists anywhere outside of a puppy's eyes (because cats do not and will not give a fuck for you and you love them anyways). I'll swim in those brown saucers of eyes that he has and his sneezing and jumping and his leaving bones and toys all over my formerly pristine living room and I'll laugh my fucking ass off.

Because today? Today is grey skies. And I know tomorrow will be tears. But if you want to go where the rainbows end, yesterday is here and you have to just say goodbye.

Goodbye.

Photo - N
Words - S