THE PIANO KEYS. KEEP STEPPING. ON MY TOES. THEY DO IT WITH A LOW, GRAVELLY, DOMESTIC APPLIANCE VOICE LIKE THE DAY I CAUGHT YOU DANCING. DANCING SO BEAUTIFULLY. IN THE VIOLET ROOM WITH THE SHAGGY. DRUNKEN. HOOVER. OH. ONE-EYED CARPET FACE I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING. I SWEAR MY TINNITUS IS ACTING UP. THE ROOM HASN’T STOPPED RINGING SINCE YOU OPENED YOUR MOUTH THE FIRST TIME. WHAT AN UPSIDE-DOWN BLUES CLUB I WALKED INTO. I ORDER A DRINK FROM THE SINK. IT TOLD ME STRAIGHT OUT TO **** RIGHT OFF. I THINK I JUST LOST ITS NOTEBOOK. THE ROOM OF BACKWARDNESS. OUTWARD. HANDS. THUMBS. I THINK I MEAN. PLEASE DEAR GOD. STOP CROONING. SIGHS THE RUG. TIRED OF STEVEN. STEVEN DOESN’T KNOW EITHER. ANYTHING. NOT EVEN. ABOUT THE CARPET.

Big fluffy dressing gowns keep misbehaving and stuffing themselves into un-rounded empty spaces and the spaces are shrinking so excuse me BUT I’M A LITTLE STUCK OVER HERE like the nightmare about losing teeth, about being too small and driving a big van, a massive van down a long hill, it gets steeper and THERE’S NO BRAKES. MAYBE IT’S THE MARRIAGE OF TWO PERFECT ENTITIES, ME AND THE DRESSING GOWNS, that is. But I’d expected it to pan out a little differently than end in the middle of a Bridget Jones film or some other badly frequented metaphor glued together with lollipop sticks. Who are these people who don’t find themselves biting into deep pure, gross, clogged nothing when they have an empty wall in front of them? I bet THEY DANCE FABULOUSLY with toasters.

True hacks and phonies all around, speaking through their ivory horns of pure disgust and wallowing in incompetence, ******* and kissing and mishandling their newborn children which they name in propriety and for the pearls of God that allow them to **** and **** well. I will blast them all to the deepest of hell for there they belong with me and they will be outrightly ****** by the sojourning sheiks that give their sufferers a razor-tipped ******* that they know they deserve. Where is your relatable, so enjoyable, three or four piece family TV meal that you so deeply craved after a long day at work? It is gone gone gone and now you are subject to your deepest incongruities with yourself, how dare you be such a bother and how dare you believe in your ability to inspire. If you are not feeling this frustration of never ceaselessly being able to grasp at the story that lies within the easel of the juices of your soul, then you are not- and never will be- worth anything more than some broken throbbing piece of genitalia that seethes and suckles at the broken fallacies of pure love and distraught youth. You do not know and you will never know, and if you dare you will never truly make progress for you are a vacuous, insufferable, erratic dame that is not a good piece of skin so much as you are the perfect tool for everyone: a loudspeaker stripped naked and bare for all the world to ****; a true contributor, unlike your deepest and most esteemed of peers. Aww, how does that feel? How does it feel to finally implode from your own vicarious and hollow attempts at wisdom and knowledge? What’s left to be learned has been learned, don’t you understand? Don’t you get it? Don’t you think it’s time to stop digging your ***** ***** nails into that rusted cloud of old hope and forgiveness? Everyone has left, and that is what we must deal with. You must be some mongrel to sit down like an unrepentant dog. Cross-legged and all.

A shelter for the insects to fester.
A refuge for rotting dreams.
A being with no identity.
A splint within reality
I want to harbor in.
A dying fire buried
under ash that can still burn.
I want to touch and know
what it means to feel.
I hope to reincarnate
the other piece of my soul
Before this body is dust.

Suddenly, I had to catch my breath, I arose from my pillow trembling and stunned from a nightmare. My heart thumping incessantly against my chest. Sweat drops were streaming from my face. I gazed at the fan whirring above me and then to the flayed walls that surrounded me. I turned to the light that begged to come in from a drawn shade, half-drunk alcoholic bottles, and an uncapped night time sleep aid on my counter. It was oh so familiar: the perpetual nightmares, the same ceiling fan whirring sluggishly above me, the alcohol I used to drown my sorrows in and the pills. I was weary of the depressing ambience. I couldn’t wake up to this another night. Under my breath, while using a finger to wipe the crust from the corner of my eye I muttered "how will I ever get out of this labyrinth?"

              I sauntered outside my room to the living room, grabbed a diet coke from the fridge, swiped a Malborne cigarrete and a lighter from the counter, and stepped out the door. I perched on the stairway leading to the mahogany door and lit a cigarette. As I drew the nicotine in, I started to ponder on the quickest and most painless way to take my life. after much contemplation and weighing of options, I came to a decision. I hurled the cigerette on the ground, stepped on it till I was certain I put it out, twisted the door ****, and slammed the door behind me. I unbuckled my belt as I walked into my room, climbed atop my bed, fastened the belt around my neck and hung it to that same sluggish fan. Who knew it will be the death of me? I took my last deep breath, then took a step forward without hesitation. There was a sudden grasp around my neck, and a shriek came bursting out from the tightness of my throat. I found myself six inches above the ground begging for air, waving my arms in an awkward motion as though that will somehow save me. My soul was slipping away from its body. I could feel it. I could feel a separation, and even though I had always been skeptic about whether we have souls or not, this last few minutes cleared every doubt. It was departing, that unfathomable thing within us that we sometimes describe as light or as the Hindus call it "I" was departing from its home. Everywhere slowly turned dark, even though my eyes were bulging outside its sockets. And Just before I embarked on a journey atop the coach of death, a muffled scream brought air back to my lungs and sent electric shocks through my body.

            Suddenly, there was another urge to catch my breath. I arose from an unfamiliar bed with no fan whirring above me. The walls were cream white, no half-drunk alcoholic bottles laying on their sides. But there were pills in a transparent bottle. Myriads of them stacked neatly in a cabinet. It took me a while to realize I was laying on a hospital bed. It also took me a while to discern a hand clutching firmly to mine. I turned my head slowly to my sisters cried out eyes fixed on me.