Disjointed Thoughts on a Parking Garage

I was staying out longer. Wandering. No more midnight. No more two. Now four, five, daybreak. Nightly.

Close out the bars. Wander. Sit on the ledge of a parking garage and drink and write and watch the serenity below.

At some point I had stopped seeing people as living. Now all just shadows and cardboard and obstacles. I think I can pinpoint where it started, but more likely than not it was a slow progression. I know I've always been alien. Always distant. I know I've always had trouble living among them but it was so easy to lie. So easy to mimic. To be one of them, at least superficially. And mostly I think it worked.

And then, when dark, when people disappear, me. Staring at the street from four stories up. Alone and at peace, mostly.

Mostly.

Drink.

Fall now. Mid-October. Wool cap. Long coat. Hands in my sleeves and I don't mind the beer warming in my backpack.

Someone told me once that in fall I fall in love.

Fuckin' cheers to that, I think and pull from the beer.

I lose my balance and fall backward onto the concrete and it hurts and I lie there. I stay concious. Nothing feels broken. My beer remains upright in a well trained hand and I stare at what few stars I can see through the residual light of the town.

Out there it's plain to see.

Out there it's absurd to think.

Tired, but I refuse to go home and sleep. I could sleep here, I think. No. Keep going. To madness. Keep going.

TO MADNESS.

Soak my brain. Wring it out. Destroy it.  Destroy. There is no beauty at the top. The gods see domain. The mortals see beauty. Send me to the fucking bottom. Show me beauty. Show me light. Show me something astonishing. Make me feel. Make me feel. Make me feel. Make me feel.

I sit up and drink. Turn myself around and set my well bruised and scabbed back against the wall of the parking garage and laugh for a moment to myself.

Who fucking lives like this?

Me, I guess.

Not for long, I imagine.

Fucking good.

TO MADNESS.

There is nothing else for me there so I stand and begin the walk through the garage. The angled floor that after left after left after left eventually spits you out into a parking lot where years ago I parked and I can see my old office from here. That other life. That other me.

Hey! I think at the window on the top, at the corner where I stared from each day, Hey! Here's your goddamned future!

I throw my can at it but it disappears somewhere in the bushes.

A thousand thoughts and words spinning in my booze and illness addled brain.

"It makes my heart hurt," you say.

I know.

Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do?

I walk toward home, though I probably won't end up there and I pull another beer from my backpack and open it and drink as I stomp through town.

"It makes my heart hurt."

What are you saying? What does that mean?

Speak.

I am no one.

I am nothing.

Of course you don't speak.

I want to write you a love letter, you deserve one, but I'm scared of what I might say.

Hi, I want to be closer to you. I want to be more to you. Hi. I want to try. Hi. I'm a hand in rubble. I'm a whimper among screams. My heart beats for you and I am incapable of expressing it accurately but I hope you live well.

I fall in someones yard a few blocks from my house and I lay there. I stay there.

To madness.