I've been drinking more since you left.
It hasn't gotten dangerous yet,
But it's hard for me to know that limit.

You've been drinking more, too,
But in the company of others,
In the company of friends.

I've been drinking alone, mostly.
Two shots or so just before bed.
From the bottle, so I don't ***** a glass.

I wonder if I'm forming a habit.
I wonder when that habit becomes dependency.
I wonder when dependency becomes addiction.

I promised I'd still be here when you got back,
But we haven't spoken in weeks.
I'm not so sure I can keep my word.

The sky is aflame.

To the west, it burns crimson.
A warm gradient that seems like a massive forest fire,
turning to a bright copper in the middle
and ending as a quiet mahogany.

To the east, a near-blinding white.
With no gradient or change as it rises,
simply dying down eventually,
propped up by unholy spotlights that pierce the atmosphere.

The north is charred a mute maroon,
a short glass of auburn carelessly splashed to the horizon.
To the south, pale bone paints away the stars,
spattered with shades of pewter and smoke.

I cannot see the stars through all the light,
and I do not know which way to follow.
The sky is aflame, lit by so many sources,
rendering it empty and dull, burning away.

"
Do you ever just lay down
And look at the wall in the dark
And listen to your fan spin
And feel an overwhelming sense of existential helplessness?

So you draw your sheet closer around you,
but moving it puts colder parts of the sheets on you,
plus now your feet are uncovered, so you move,
but that makes the fitted sheet come undone.

So you kind of just fidget
and it feels like there's a vice around your chest
and you try to think
But your thought won't fully solidify

So it just feels like you're floating
in this broken word soup
and the only thing that forms is
'How did it get to this?'
"

Enter scene:

A girl sits on a bed in a room.
The room smells like cat **** and Fabuloso
(whatever the name of the yellow scent is).
The black-out curtains are open,
letting the moon shine onto the bottom of the bed.
The lavender fitted sheet has come undone.

The girl hasn't slept in a day.
She hasn't eaten in two days.
There is an empty handle of Jack
that she bought three days ago.
The scabs on her leg were four days old,
But she reopened them three hours ago.

The girl had chestnut hair that flowed,
cascading to the small of her back,
but she cut it herself, drunk in the bathroom.
The girl has chestnut hair that spills
in a mass of tangles to her shaking shoulders,
uneven, moving with her as she readjusts.

If I died today,
I would not die happy.

I would die unfulfilled.
I would die with more regrets than I wish to have.
I would die with so many things left undone,
And people left confused in the aftermath.

I would die wishing for more time,
Or wanting another chance,
Ruminating on all the things I never finished.

But I have lived my life in the same vein.
I have lived unfulfilled,
With more regrets than I wish to have,
With things left undone and people confused in the aftermath.

I have lived my life wishing for more time,
Wishing for another chance,
Ruminating on things I didn't finish,

If I died today,
I would die the way I lived,
And I've been told that's the way to go.

I can’t feel the concrete through my shoes
As the chain-link cage around the sidewalk loops around me.
I climb steadily up the incline to your bridge.
The cars pass quietly and sparsely, hopping islands
In this suppressed midnight hour, streetlights reflected
Beneath us in the water. I carry you with me, as I do every day.
It’s been three months, nine days.
I think of our days together.
Of our youth, of your lilac perfume and chestnut eyes.
I think of how we never got tired,
Or how you never got old,
And I reach the apex of the bridge with these thoughts swimming about.
I lean and look to the water as the reflections shimmer in a boat’s wake.
And I wonder how it felt when you landed.
I want to ask you, was it instant? Did you feel yourself pass?
And I want to find out, to dive in after you and chase you down.
Did I tell you, I can’t see my therapist anymore?
I can’t afford her.
And as soon as I couldn’t pay, she cared little of my problems.
How ****** is that?
I raise our daughter alone now, but I can’t do her hair how you could.
She’s sixteen months, and four days.
I think often of if she’ll remember you as something more
Than one of her father’s stories
But the other day, she saw your picture on the mantle.
And she called for you, and began to cry as she pointed.
And I followed suit as I struggled with her hair.
I wonder, if you would have let me, could I have helped?
This that I feel now in your wake, shimmering like those lights,
Is this how you felt for those last months?
Could I have done anything to stop this?
And I think of your parents, of mine, of the therapist that I can’t see anymore,
With their piercing, bloodshot eyes.
Their needling questions.
I wonder if that’s how you perceived me, and I realize,
There’s nothing I could’ve done to help either of us.

If you could hear that voice the way I do
For just a week,
For just a day,
For just an hour,
Or even just a passing whisper in the night.

If you could hear the things I do,
You would understand my shattered-glass smile,
Why I see no light in my own reflection,
How focused I am on how insincere I smile.
Even when I smile so genuine, I'm unconvinced.

If you could hear the things I do,
Maybe you would hear that screech,
That accompanies my laugh in moments of joy.
Maybe you would hear my own mind
Shouting me back down into that grey dull.

If you could hear that voice the way I do,
Never silent for a moment,
Forcing me into a docile silence,
If you could just hear the screaming in my head,
You would understand why I'm always on the edge of collapse.

If you could hear that voice the way I do,
You would be stunned into silence.
You would be repulsed by your own reflection.
You could never let go of that last nagging thought.
You would hate yourself as deeply as I hate me.