Little pink pills
To help lie about the swiftness of my temper
To inhibit the churning mind
To change what I was born to be.

Little pink pills
That I can't justify taking
Because I don't want to live a lie
Forcibly pretending I'm someone mellow and simple
When there was a storm raging underneath

Ten years ago,
You laid limp on the bed
In the room with the palm tree print
All over the bed spread and walls.
With your chin tilted up,
And your mouth slightly parted
And no one knew if you were asleep
Or not.

But in that room with the palm trees.
In that "paradise"
With the window that perfectly framed the lagoon-style pool
And untouched nature just behind it
And a whole world that kept turning.

No one could explain why such a tragedy
Would befall such a wonderful human.
I don't know if you ever saw yourself as wonderful.
I don't know if you believed you were allowed to be human.
But the world owed you more than all it took.

The nine year old watching you decline,
Waited for you to get up and say you were feeling better.
So when her parents came to tell her you were gone,
She never bought it.

But that tinge of guilt and regret,
Can't keep the grown child from the pills and the *****
And the will to lay limp in the room with the palm trees
And wait for the inevitable.

Light turns the inside of my eyelids red
As the sun rises.
And I can still taste last night's cigarettes.
And the room is too hot.
And it all comes back to me.
And my stomach churns.
But I still can't *****.

1:30am
Early night
To turn in
And surrender to sleep.

If I sleep,
I miss 6 hours of
my life
...if I'm lucky.
But an hour wasted
Is an hour lost.
And days are numbered.
All days.

If I stay awake...

Puffing on my third menthol of the night, he looks at me and says "you know, these apparently crystallize your lungs." He's got one between his lips too. But they'll only crystallize my lungs. So I look over to the nearly finished bottle of wine to my left, proud of my handiwork. But as I slip into drunkenness, I know I haven't taken my last puff of the night, so I try to keep my breathing a little shallower, but I end up inhaling even deeper, trying to feel those tiny organs harden.

I talked about myself all night.
Tuned out everyone else's worlds. I've stopped being able to listen. I've become self absorbed, in my cigarettes, in my drinking, in being nineteen and stupid. But the night was warm and heavy, even when the breeze whipped around my dark hair, momentarily obstructing my vision. I was surrounded by people who I perceived to love me. As for me, virtually all love I receive is unrequited.  So every work borne from me is about me, is part of me, is all me, because how could I possibly broaden my mental scope when I spend so much of my time alone falling in love with my own decaying reflection.
She really is beautiful though. Those huge, deep hazel eyes. The dark, dark hair juxtaposed to that pale skin. And the accenting dark circles under her eyes from running on four hours of sleep a night for thirty plus days. Self indulgence.

Self hatred.

Inhale deeper and feel my lungs dying.
Giggling at how I still talk like a thirteen year old child.
Laughing at my philosophy that if this teen angst continues into your twenties and beyond, you  just become Hemingway.
It's all very funny, really. I truly am a caricature of a real person. I am completely devoid of all authenticity and every ounce of me is contrived.

But this too shall pass.