A Moment at Sea

I had a stomach full of chinese and it wasn't happy. Elle and I had watched The Texas Chainsaw Massacre while we ate and now she was rolling a joint while we polished off a few glasses of wine and deciding what to do next. Maybe paint. Maybe write songs. Maybe wander town.

I had been in a strange place all day. Hopeful and lost also. A few confrontations in the mirror and a rock in my guts. Keep drinking, I had thought.

Elle's living room was lit by strings of christmas lights lining the molding and doorways. Two strands of blueish white and two strands of yellowish white. Both sold as "white". It wasn't unfamiliar and I found it comfortable. I thought about how much I preferred my bed without a frame and how much I hated living up to where people thought I should be and what people thought I should be.

My stomach was stretched and overfull and ached and I would have asked for a stomach rub but I thought it strange and somehow sacred. I am an idiot.

Elle went to the kitchen and put on an old mix CD she had found and smoked the joint. Pot made my anxiety skyrocket and over the last ten years or so had a way of crushing me under panic attacks and depression. More so, anyway. Elle knew and smoked in the other room. She didn't have to but I thought it was beautiful that she did. The mix CD was good and french pop music played and then Portishead after. I watched Elle mouth along to it and I thought that was beautiful too.

When she had rolled the joint she apologized for dropping pot into my wine and when I stopped to take a drink I didn't see any at first. I sipped and saw it stuck to the side of the glass. A small nub soaked now in wine and I took it out and set it on an end table.

I looked at Elle in the other room smoking and drawing with oil pastels and I could see it all. All.

I could also, and clear, see nothing. Soon and forever.

I know you thought you were a good person.

You weren't.