Things had calmed. Only embers. I spent the weekend sober and quiet and mostly home. I spent sixty four hours awake before and I called off of work and I told my coworker why and she said I had been on a two week bender and that my body was probably sideways because of it. I hadn't thought about it but she was right. I stayed home, sober, and quiet.
Pacing the house.
Ignoring most people.
Drinking water.
The spring was trying to break through but it hadn't yet. A warm day here and there, but a ten minute walk made me cold. Just stay inside and decompress.
I had cut your necklace off of me two months ago and two weeks ago I made it a bracelet and I wore it until Easter morning when I woke up and it had fallen off in the night. I think it was supposed to then. Rebirth.
Sat down at the kitchen table in yesterdays pants with a large glass of water and a notebook I was hunched and scribbling. Writing poems I'd never do anything with. Quick bursts of short lines, next page, new thought. Repeat. I had boxes of small notebooks like this. Torn paper covered in scrawled spider-webbing track marks, barely legible, written at lightning pace. It's the only way I can do things. Quickly, without a plan, without doubt. Sometimes it works out.
Sometimes it works out.
I wrote like this until I ran out of fuel and closed the notebook. A few pages about you. One about Grant's adventure. A few about someone else. A few about another someone else. One about me. I leaned back in the chair and finished the water. It was after noon then and I had gone long enough.
I went to the kitchen and poured a glass of wine and I drank it down in one swallow and I poured another and took it out to the living room and I looked at the painting I had smeared across the mirror you used to like. I liked the painting better than the mirror but now I could see they were one and they were always supposed to be one and now they must be so happy.
Sometimes it works out.
I was supposed to meet friends for Easter dinner at your old building. I didn't want to, but I had to get used to these sorts of things and I thought it wouldn't be as bad as last time and the next time would be even easier, and soon you'd be only a shadow faded on my x-ray. No concern if no one knows.
I took a sip and considered putting a shirt on or making lunch. I couldn't decide. I set the glass down. Picked up the guitar with the long crack and the broken tuning peg and played a song about someone else.
I'd never play it for anyone. It was composed of the sorts of things you can't say to people. The things people shouldn't know live inside you. I sang it quiet and slow and I thought it might be a good song and when I didn't know that person anymore, maybe I would sing it again. Maybe I would sing it and someone new would hear it and they would think it is how they feel also and maybe they'd know they aren't alone and maybe their day might be a little better for it.
Sometimes it works out.
The song was over and it was nearly time for me to leave. In the clean parts of the mirror I could see my hair sticking up, out, in waves, wherever. My eyes tired. My wasting body. I finished the glass and walked to the kitchen and poured another. I filled a plastic pouch also, to take with me. Set it on the counter.
I went to the bedroom, pulled on a shirt. My pants hung. I pulled my hair back into a knot and went to the bathroom and put deodorant on and that was all good enough. I drank the glass down in a few swallows and avoided eye contact in the bathroom mirror and the first two glasses were catching up to me. My skin warmed a bit in that wonderful and welcome way and whispered through my bones "friend".
It didn't look warm out. The sun was out, but you can usually see the difference. I pulled a sweater on and took my plastic pouch of wine and my car keys and thought I felt better than I did a half hour before and soon I'd be eating with friends and laughing and singing songs.
Sometimes it works out.
