Check your back pockets.
Did you check them? Because I think you might have left your mind in there.
Since you can't find it anymore, I've learned its always a good thing to check your back pockets-
before you wash yourself out.
Because maybe then your mind will end up being banged against loose change, wrapped and unwrapped in receipts and gum wrappers.

Just like mine was.
Now my whole worlds been dyed pink with confusion that bleeds through that one red sock of a mind of mine.

Don't be silly.
Don't obstinate.
Check those back pockets of yours.
You might find it befriending some lint in the left back pocket of some jeans left on the bathroom floor for the past week and a half.
Stuck there, having been kicked around by fumbling feet that ***** in the darkness at night;
Splashed with hot water and trampled on by moist feet fresh out of a scolding shower.
check them.
I'll wait.

Told you.

I'm taking a bath.
Scrubbing it off of me, if you wanted to know.
The dirt you left there.
The crevices crust-laden with guilt
and all that good stuff.

Steel-wooling it away from me.
To cleanse the deeper parts of me.
To scrape off every layer of dirt
you've encased me in.

'Til I see skin again.
The pinky swollen skin of mine,
that I lost when you buried me in soot and ash.
When you tarred and feathered me.
When you doused me in gasoline and set me ablaze.
When you mocked me by pouring flour over my head.

Once I've stopped scalding myself to sting away your leftovers.
Once I've ridden myself of every speck of you.
Then we can discuss-
if I 'had a good time'.

Time hasn't stood still here,
I have; stopped mid-step.
I'm a statue that gets climbed on by small children,
quicker moving than the eyes of their parents.
I am petrified
like wood in permafrost.
Forever here for thousands of years.
Trapped within this moment.
Always and forever about to commit some great crime,
or to do some beautiful act of kindness.
Always about to make a movement, but forever doing nothing.
I'm reaching towards something that has long escaped me.
Holding my hand out begging for it to return
for it to nestle itself into my hand without the need to lean closer or grasp it.
When will I learn the only thing left to collect while in this frozen state is bird crap?

You're spitting blood at me instead of words,
grasping onto clothing,
retching onto your knees,
pleading,
begging,
stupid.
I'm simply kicking the chair from underneath you,
you strung yourself up.
Consider it the lesson of your life,
and the end of it.

I feel that old twinge of bitterness creeping up again from the shadows.
I almost don't recognize the pattering footsteps of the old fiend.
never the less, the hair on the back of my neck stands up and my eyes glaze over.
Next thing you know I'm foaming at the mouth speaking gibberish in-between nips at your ankles.
Ah! the familiar pang of imaginary injustices,
piling up and filing in to rows of sentences without pauses.
Oh what a wonderful feeling is that of the raw ball of hate caught in the throat!
Venom drips from the fangs hidden in nonchalant inquisitions.
Tread carefully for I lay in brush of amber straws waiting for the perfect time to lunge.
Needless to say, I did not seek out the dog that teethed upon me. Nevertheless, I've become unforgiving and rabid.

Every time it happens she can feel it breaking off,
branching out and reforming.
Every time she utters a word,
she is walking down a new path constructed a millisecond before she steps.
She is choosing her realities with no particular discrimination.
It isn't that she wafts through the wind without care,
it is that she calculatedly assembles her existence but fails at being an active member in it's design.
She could be,
though in doing so she would doom herself to a path of bland ever-constant introspection and would have to forgo living life altogether.
A billion or so versions of her move in unison so perfectly that even the most scrupulous judge would not find fault in her chorus lines.
However there is always something amiss,
even if it be nothing more than a hair they are all separate and un-touching.
Which of these 'perfect' copies is the 'real' one is an utter mystery.
I think it is safe to say that they are all the 'real' ones,
what is important here is the particular one.
There are trillions of paths that hold her,
but not quite the her that we are speaking of now;
not the her that moves her pencil to the left in such a way as to create a stray mark on the paper;
not the her that wrote this.

And then you say, "All we are is dust in the wind."
Little specks,
enumerable and miniscule,
grains of the infinitesimal,
listless,
pointless,
directionless,
fading dreams of nothing.
Well, I say "Thank God, I love the prospect,
there is freedom in being nothing."
Why are you so displeased with this conclusion?
Is it that the contention you wrought is dispersed by my contentment?
We'll let it drift then on the wings of some updraft on it's way to God.
invisible to the naked eye,
just as you and I shall drift thoughtlessly into the atmosphere.
Little particles of dust fading into nothing and immeasurably free.