Today will be retroactive; in penance to those times spent wondering.
The will they wont they has finally calmed.
We wont count today,
so I'm noting it now as an important moment left undiscovered and forgotten later.
Today something came into being that was already there.
The gestation cycle forgotten, we only count the time after birth.
Sometimes I like to think of myself as nine months older.
So, with that I say we were in womb before now.
Welcome to the world.
But for our own purposes we can count those months spent in utero.

Let the beauty and pain of the world spill over the coffee table and onto the floor.
Use the raw materials to construct a reason-
a reason for why my mother tells me
what her grandmother told her:
"Like cream you will rise to the top".
Make something of yourself out of the chaos
and jagged edges of the world.
Let the bits and pieces of reality loose
to align in nothing but piles and small bits.
Then tediously right all wrongs,
in steady and purposeful motions,
until you are but dust and granules yourself.

This life is unsustainable and eventually we all will wither and succumb to it.
It's for the best, to rest, on the pillowed walls of complacency
or wander through the hallowed halls of indifference.
Just once, you may see the cracks in the flooring and wonder what lies just underneath your feet.
And fall we will, like dominoes.
One by one
Like matches lighting matches
to the tune of our own
and surprise of us all.

When she drinks,
she tip toes right through that
line;
into a different state altogether.
A train barreling towards her
comes to a squealing focus.
There is danger everywhere
in the silence.
Someone poked a hole in her bubbly head
but everything was going so well.
So well.
Oh, well on the rocks it is.

I don't watch ****.
You're more likely to see me squirreling away pictures of elaborate bathtubs, in shame.
Sometimes,
in the still of the night,
I look up well thought-out Murphy-beds and closets that disappear into secret home offices.
I keep a hidden stash of blackout poems
and lewd photos of street artistry around my neighborhood.
I savor notes my best friend gave me during middle school.
I walk a crooked walk down to the seedy underbelly of my past
and read feverishly all my past feelings and relive them to remember how vivid they once were.
But,
just like ****,
in watching and re-watching and savoring all the same flavors
everything tastes like mud now.

"It's not me!" she broke in, hands still shaking,
heart still trying to headbutt through her rib-cage.
"SHUT UP! I don't know you!", she screamed at the wall of her bedroom,
panting.
Making memories right then and there.
Born like stars in the darkness.
Dreams that let loose into the silence of the real world like breaking through glass.
Dreams to make the grown men weep in panic.
Dreams to drink an extra cup of coffee for,
on your way to work.

I watched it run out,
like a recording where the film just flips,
over and over again.
The dull empty clicking of a machine without purpose,
and white empty all-filling space.