We'll laugh until we choke...

Days.

Really, only another week until it starts winding down.

Send smoke offerings to heaven.

I don’t have the time or the dedication to be famous.

Two nights in a row, I feel better.

Have to slither down the drain and into the sewer below,

then I start to even out. Call in sick. 

Six hours. I forgot how much things can change when

you’re not looking at them every day. 

Forty two minutes. I get tired of looking at me, indirectly.

You’re the one looking at my face. 

Staying awake hours too long so my hair dries properly.

And because I want to listen to the 

fish and the dog and the cat and the walls and the floor

and you. Inhaling and exhaling.

The same air that poisoned me only last night. Right here.

Twelve seconds. Time travel.

Crooked smile. Gladly spend another two hours in his 

company. But I can’t. Weekend

is over. Back to life. Or sleep. Or stupor. Or death. 

Whichever fits the best. Times up.

The world is ending. 

Your watch alarm beeps softly in the next room. I won’t turn it off ‘cause it marks time for me. Two o’clock in the morning. Beep. You forgot it. Like you forgot to plug in the screen where I watch other people living their lives. Unaware I look at them pictures from another time and place. Eyes burn with the wish to close against sand storms made of glass. Grits against my teeth and tangles in my eye lashes. Drive fifty miles at midnight to give you what I know you wouldn’t give to me. My professor said you don’t love me and I didn’t make a note of that bit…. It’ll be on the test? Broken pencil lead is a gateway drug to broken stories and broken skin under finger nails. Let me sleep.

A needs to come out. End the cramping in my abdomen And the fire on my forehead. Acting like crochet hooks of all different sizes is the sum of my Friday night. Well. That and reruns of popular medical dramas. Acting? No. It took me three hours to reply so you told me to forget it. Want I should pick you up some snacks on my way to purgatory? I’m just watching other people live on Netflix.