I don't know how much I was allotted  at birth.
I've squandered most of it. Alone. Like so many others.
Wondering, hoping, wishing, and scared.

Will anyone ever love me? Why doesn't anyone call? If only. I'm going to die alone.

Out loud these thoughts never emerged. Cloaked behind stupid jokes and momentary lapses of reason.

Now that I'm older. Now that I've come to realize these questions, like so many others. May very well go unanswered.

I've resigned the inquisitor and sent the hangman home. Deciding instead to list these thoughts as beautiful mysteries.

Cigarettes, ***, and whiskey cloud my mind just enough. To keep the book closed. The book will always be there. I know it by heart. Though I'm tired of reading it, hoping to find something I may have missed.

Of all the chapters in that book. My favorites are the ones of you. I never finish these chapters, because I know how they end.