Scribble

When was the last time someone did something nice for you? Not because they felt like they needed to or someone told them that they had to. But because they wanted to. Simply. Randomly. Surprisingly. When was the last time someone held the door for you, and then asked you how your day was going because they truly meant it and actually wanted to know the answer? When was the last time?

21412.

A number that may not seem like much, but always makes me think of you. The way it is the same, frontwards, backwards. 21412.

Days like this always make me think of you, but I don’t know if you know that. I wonder if you think of me, too. Think. Do you think of me, too?

21412.

It’s funny how the train sounds the same no matter what state I’m in. Distant yet determined to remind me of where it’s going. Going. Always going somewhere. Choo-choo, choo-choo, choo-choo. The train, it whistles and yells, and hey, at least it’s going somewhere.

It’s funny how the pain never changes, never goes away. Funny how it keeps chugging along at a determined, full-throttle run, making a break for it. Making a jump.

I’m walking down the hallway when I think about footsteps. When I think about shadows. When I think about silhouettes projected on the empty walls, projected up there like we own them. We are puppeteers and the shadows are our friends, dancing in time with our jagged jerks and pulls. Yanking their strings to tell the world, Stop, look at me. I’m fine.

I can’t walk slowly enough on nights like tonight. My backpack can’t weigh enough and the wind can’t bite me hard enough, can’t make me zip up my jacket and tighten the straps to my bag. Nights like tonight make me look at the hazy orange sky and remember where mountains used to stand, embracing the sky like natural skyscrapers.

Your particular neurosis is oddly placid:

the lukewarm tension of overwatered coffee

with a streak of malice

like chai too brutally peppered.

Sodden in the dregs is an aching sadness:

like the gin you tipsily told me

you needed to get through the day.

Your lips were slick with gin when

you pushed your tongue inside of me

as though the marriage of sex and drink

had birthed a drug slightly too lethal for words.

Faces of strangers swirled around me into a blur of confusion. I was alone in a foreign New Hampshire shopping mall, my family hidden somewhere behind me in the crowd of people. I couldn’t see them, but then again, I didn’t really care. A giant balloon was currently swelling inside my stomach and I swore it would burst any second. The pressure of my bladder was pinching my whole entire body, altering my usual instincts. I needed to pee this instant, or else!