My soul's decaying,
bedridden and growing pale,
drawing it's last breaths.

He'll call when it's time
to rest body with the soul
and I'll close my eyes.

I have a problem
with looking back at my past
and keeping that path.

I choke excuses.
My discontent is my friend.
He won't let me go.

But that isn't true.
My fingers are tight like a
vice grip round his wrist.

Want to sweeten it,
say "in sickness and in health."
but it's all sickness.

Knock, knock.

And I can hear it again. I don't speak about it like I used to, why would I? None of you can hear it, likely none of you ever will. But I am beginning to believe that's because your minds are too together to bear it, to allow it to slip inside. I am cracked, faded in a few places, I am surviving on the cusp of your world and his world.

Knock, knock. Jessica.

That's why I can hear him and its nothing like you believe. No haunting, gravelly voice in my room at night. Certainly not on the wind, now that would be insanity.

Knock. Let me in.

No, he's in the room with me. Seated on my new love seat making small talk about the weather and commenting on how I've changed. "it's been a while he says" and I nod demurely. "I don't need you as much. Ive too many things to hold on to here for me to think of leaving with you anymore." platitudes and sentiments and the sound of his tongue 'cluck, clucking' on the roof of his mouth in response to the decisions that brought him here once more. As he turns to the door he stops and faces me one hand on each shoulder.

Rough palms.

"You do realize that although I can visit and check up and then return to business as usual now, that I will not always do so. One day I will come without the intention of saying goodbye."

Click.

My father is not your father. My kind are few and far between, many in padded cells or medicated into oblivious humanity. Only by chance have I been capable of blending in.

I do not belong here but I do not belong there either, not yet.

I find passion in the strangest things, perhaps they aren't strange at all, I just feel as if I should be passionate of my own ideas, children of my own soul. A fire awakens in me from the words of another alcohol addled mind and I search deep inside to find a way to make a beautiful thing but I'm always far too sober to and I wonder if maybe I could be like that. A pull or two from Jack's lips makes me feel warm, like I'm home, similar to how a lovers hand on my stomach while im sleeping makes me feel. But maybe if I could find that Absolut resolve she could make my insides as beautiful as I am on the surface. Oh, yes, I am beautiful I see that now but that's neither here and certainly not there. I miss when I could wind words around and around and around me and I could climb like an eight legged beast from one end to the other visiting those i'd ensnared. Smiles and laughs and tears and everything we shared is here but you went away. As if to tell me what it is I never wanted to know. 

You can have your heart or you can have your tongue but only god could have both and even he chooses to have neither.