Well, it was April

So, it was Spring again. Well, it was April.

So, I was unemployed again.

It was a day in the week, though I have no idea which. It was around midnight and I was walking to the gas station. People had been over and before each came I told them "bring booze" but it wasn't enough, not nearly. I knew these people, but they didn't know me.

The air was warm and I wondered if I had over dressed for the night but I was comfortable and I knew the flannel and sweatshirt were exactly what I needed. I had a dream the night before where I had drowned in a pool at a party and a girl I didn't know in waking had loved me there and screamed for me and no one reached for me and I died with contempt for them, all, but then I woke and kissed Elle.

I had only money that had been given to me but I had spent some on bills and most on alcohol and I spent five of the last seven on more and I walked home and as I walked I thought of worlds I hadn't seen, lives and words, hands and minds, and I imagined myself kneeling, fucking, bleeding, breathing in the road. I walked home. I opened one of the beers I had bought and focused on a sentence I had heard. I drank half of the beer and walked and I drank the other half and threw it in the bushes where once I had a moment of insanity with a lesbian who hated me and loved acid and I opened another beer and drank a good fucking amount of it and walked on.

I hated this town.

I hated who I d grown to be inside of it.

I hated that I was fine with it.

I thought "but... you're making something of it. Slowly. Art. Music."

The Waste's Manifesto.

I kicked the idea aside, drank more.

I knew love.

I knew of love.

I considered walking into town. Finding something. Anything.

I knew the doors to bang on. I knew the words to throw around. I knew the morning coming.

The idea of aging had been stuck behind my eyes the last few weeks. Burning. Was I? Of course. Was aging growing? I didn't know. I wasn't growing. That's for goddamned sure. Was growing necessary? I thought so, but, I never thought of growth as a path, more a system of roots or branches. Many paths. Many trails. Many lives. All end.

I heard the sentence again. Finished the second beer and threw the can into someone's yard. Opened a third. I was almost home, but that was okay. I could drink there. Write there. Wallow there.

(I wrote a different paragraph here. I deleted it here. I don't want you to know about it.)

I came to my porch and the light was on and I had the third half empty beer of my walk in my hand and Elle slept in the structure and the air was okay and the night was night and I stood motionless.

There was no indication of what to do or how to live and I had no interest in how anyone else had done it. I dealt in fantasy and I dreamed. I was doomed. Fucked. Lost.

I finished the beer. Threw it in my neighbors lawn and heard the sentence again.

Elle slept. I drank.