A day in the life of an alley cat, struck dead on the least busy street in the smallest town in Nebraska.
1 am: Druggy, *** you money, ******, don't deserve love, not easy to tell mom. I think of you. Your lungs are begging for my scold. Control is the word you use when no other fits the sentence. You occupy my mind when I am restless, testing the limits of kindness and low voices.
4 am: Your smile, the warmest hot chocolate of your eyes, your knuckles, the baby fat that melted from you, it haunts me. It's like I caught of a glimpse of the wrong angel, the half rotten, beyond gone, but still glowing angel. I killed you with a .45 and a gallon of mouthwash. You dripped into the Earth as a puddle beneath my toes. Gracious Lord, do not forgive me. I know I don't.
8 am: Insomnia without poetry. Tired without body. Maggots without mouths. Catholic priest, without sympathy. God without mercy. Drug abuse, without the realization of undignified addiction. Suicide without the comfort of killing, certainty.
3 pm: Sentiment, true and real, above annoyance and protectiveness. I am now a ghost above a body, finally weightless, finally free of His hands.
6 pm: Joy breaks open like a candy, soft center.
10 pm: Life tears my fingers open, unwraps the flesh from bone like Christmas. I feel my tongue fall out. Dusty antique radios are cleaned, losing authenticity. Their songs scream, sounding a lot like Billy Joel, after the catgut snaps. I feel my mind crawl out of the china cabinet.
11 pm: Nothing. There's really nothing to say at all.