Donut Has it Figured Out

It is morning. Earlier than I prefer. I've been awake for hours, one sleep cycle through the night. Wake up, sit up, close my eyes and clear my mind. Begin the day fresh and without the pulse and usual storm of fears and questions.

The room is dim and the air is cool. Summer was here but now is at the door, slipping on its shoes, coat, hat. It's been nice catching up, but I have to be going.

At a table with coffee. Laptop. The cat asleep and dreaming, gently twitching and moaning next to me. Long hours ahead for the rest of the week and so I take this moment of quiet to look for work in a new city, in a new state, in a new life.

I've never been happy standing still. One day into the next and look now I'm older and nothing has changed. They put a new restaurant downtown and isn't it lovely that we are all growing old and apart? Same bar stools. Same walks around the block. Constant and immeasurable fade of light behind our eyes. We got a dog. We got a house. We got a raise. We have a life. Over and over, around and around.

I've never been happy standing still.

"That will change, you'll want to settle."

I'm nearly forty now. I may become too tired to keep moving, but I doubt I will ever want to settle. Big world, short life.

That isn't to say I'm not envious. To see people who want to get married, who want to buy a house. Who want to spend decades building a career and die accomplished in those three things. I am. I don't care for those things, or to be more clear, I don't care for what they symbolize, but I long for the simplicity of the dream.

The cat is awake now and stretches and goes about cleaning himself. The bell around his neck chimes faint as he does and I watch. I read an article recently about cats and telepathy and I try to send him a message but he doesn't hear it and in my mind I call him a donut but he doesn't care and turns to face the window and lays down.

Donut. Has it figured out.


Sending resumes. More kitchen work. Not what I would choose to do, but it is easy to come by.



Keep moving.

Dissolve.

Futility eats at me.

Pointlessness.

Running fast and hard into the dark so we can run fast and hard into the dark and eventually fall over choking and exhausted and happy that we ran fast and hard into the dark.

Makes it impossible to keep work.

To stay in one place.

To be motivated, goal oriented, or successful in the eyes of anyone or myself.

To be impressed, inspired, interested, or interesting, inspiring, or impressive.

Lay on the bed. Stare at the wall or out the window. Remember the fire of drinking. Remember my cremation.





day.








night.








day.








Lay on the bed. Stare at the wall or out the window.



Dissolve.

Small Room

This small room.

Daylight, cold and barren, fills gently against the walls and over the bed and across my face.

The tops of skeletal trees from the bottom of the window and horizontal six thick black wires all touched with snow and ice.

A house plant I can't name in the corner of the window. A cat with three feet curled soft and asleep next to me. A pile of books. A basket of sleep medication and pain killers and life ephemera. The absence of a ghost retched weekly to life from some memory, some bottle, some sum of many and wasted lives.

This small room and a moment of peace.

Close my eyes. Inhale. A meditation in a moment. Exhale. Open my eyes.

Take it when I can.

A year ago I was some one else. In a dim and nicotine stained room in Texas, packed full of anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medication. Gripping tightly the bed sheets and the hope and some fucking job and some fucking need I didn't understand.

A year before that I was someone else. Drunk and screaming. High and alone and never alone. Glass to walls. Staring out from rooftops and seeing nothing. Nothing forever. Wasting into the mold in my basement, dissolving into the trash of my home. Screaming.

A year before that I was someone else. Singing. Exploring. Living. In love with you and the world as I came to see it and as I thought it should be.

A year before that I

A year before that

Before that.

Before that.

An eon.

This small room, an unimaginable distance between all of me.






This small room and the gentle breathing of a cat, curled next to me. Daylight on my face. Someone else, and soon someone else again.

This is okay. Now.