Tired, I sat on the floor of the shower
and let the water run until
I could feel each individual drop
hit the space between my shoulder blades
like a bullet,
trace the curve of my hunched spine,
and dejectedly slink
to the ground,
where the drain waited hungrily,
ready to swallow all I had to offer,
be it water
or blood.

i slide the paper off the straw, and
the smell of Jack Daniels reminds me of
memories i can't quite
remember

When things were good, they were
weightless.
We could stumble down the streets
at four in the morning,
wearing hickeys like tattoos
we'd be ashamed of at dawn.
Sneaking wristbands from friends
with fake IDs,
or faker ****.
And if we were low on cash,
we might take turns
lifting our shirts, shifting our bras,
until a flash of something sacred
earned a free drink.
I could have been
ashamed
if gravity were working.
But we were all
weightless.
Mistakes just floated away.

Our dresses were too short, and
our dresses were too tight, and
the boys wore shirts
that were good at hiding stains.
Sometimes we didn't even need words;
we could walk into
a smokey, sticky bar
and fall in love with a boy's arms
while he fell in love
with a too-short dress
and the chance to see underneath it.
And we knew
we'd be waking up
with those hickey-tattoos.
But we didn't care, because
we were all
weightless.
The boys just floated away.

Maybe we wouldn't find any
dance-floor-love,
but that was always okay, because
we were in love
with ourselves.
Our hazy heads
whispered pretty words,
and as we burned our throats
with shots of pure love,
pretty words began to slur
into a pretty song, but we could
never remember the melody
when we awoke.
So the next night
we'd shimmy into our too-tight dresses
and start ******* down
more liquid love
until we began hearing
that pretty song again.
We half-knew our sober hearts
would never be able to recall
the tune,
but it never mattered.
We were all
weightless.
Notes just floated away.

These nights, things are
heavier.
I'll pour myself some love,
but it burns like regret now.
I don't wear any too-tight dresses
because I don't much miss
the dance floor.
I don't miss the hickeys
or the four A.M. walks.
I don't miss the shirts
being lifted and pulled.
I don't miss the smoke
flooding the bars.
But I do miss the song
that I'll never quite know.
For though I am grounded,
that tune is forever
weightless,
and the notes will just float away.

We sat.
Thigh flush with thigh.
Such absolute silence, I swore
I could hear our cigarettes burning.
Such absolute stillness, you swore
you could see the world turning.
One arm draped around my shoulders,
you pointed the other
towards the trees, glowing by the stars.
"Look," you murmured, "fall
has finally caught up with us,"
and we stared at
a hint of color–
the leaves had at last begun to blush.

Your quiet breaths whispered
the unspoken words– that soon,
the trees would stand naked.
Your heavy eyelids blinked
a silent message– that soon,
the moon would set, hailing morning.
And my feeble body knew,
in every ache, in every crevice,
in every inch of skin, pound of flesh,
in every frail bone and every drop of blood–

in every touch,
my feeble body knew

the wordless truth– that soon,
the ashes would fall to our feet
and our cigarettes
would gently die.

But at that moment, we sat,
thigh flush with thigh,
and heard no ashes drop,
saw no morning come,
watched no leaves fall,
and pretended there existed
no plane waiting to take me back
to where cigarettes burn
too slowly.

I want nothing
but to write.
To purge my body of
the weakness,
coiling around my stomach
like
Eve's seductive tempter.
To write, before dusk takes over
and I commit
an unoriginal sin.
But the forbidden fruit
smells like bourbon, and
I'm just
so
thirsty.
If I could write–
if I could tell blank paper
of my split soul, hovering
between agony and apathy–
then I could find
what I need.
But words have lost their luster,
stories are just
selfish ***** on pages,
and this pen
is running low on ink.

****.

So I will write my last,
a suicide note
for the dying poet in me,
and pour myself
a round to serve the snake.

I.
The hotel room smelled
of coffee and cigarettes,
a blend that used to mean
mornings, and
conversations,
but now it just reeked of
failure.
She was running, she decided.
That would be her answer
if anyone chanced a friendly introduction
and a pleasant inquiry
as to what a young woman
like her
was doing in Tennessee.
She was running from
The Big Easy,
a city that held
a lot of bad mistakes
and one good one.
Halfway through her journey.
Halfway to Philadelphia, a
nondestination.
Where she could try to piece everything
back together. Contemplate why
she was running from
what might have been.
It was an escape
so desperately needed, but
she knew
she would return.
The south was calling for her,
whispering her name
in between her
silent sobs.
One day,
she would get behind the wheel
of her beat up, run down car
and go back
for the only thing she left behind.
A question.
A chance.
A might-have-been.


II.
Her phone rang.
It was a question. From
The Question.
She answered with a
nonanswer.
She didn't know. It was
too soon.
She sighed.
Dropped the phone, watched it
bounce across a
very empty bed.
Grabbed her purse and felt around
blindly until her hand found
the familiar shape
of a 99 cent lighter and
a pack of Camels.
Went outside
to breathe in more failure.


III.
I can't write anything
here.
I don't know
what comes next.
Maybe tomorrow,
coffee and cigarettes
will smell like
a fresh start
and the first few miles
of a long drive
to New Orleans.
But tonight, they just smell like
a question.

I saw a dead bird
in the middle
of the road.
And all I could think, was,

Why didn't
he fly
away
sooner?