As I watch her sleep, I wonder if she's dreaming at all. Or if the echoes of reflective conversations are slowly sorting through her mind, helping to ignore the vibrant chatter of speeders on television as they try to talk their way out of tickets. I can't ignore it, for some reason...


I don't mean to watch people as they sleep. I'm always so curious as to what their last fleeting thought was as they slipped under the influence of slumber. Often times, I try hard to recall the moment at which I let go and fell asleep, and I never can. This is frustrating to me, though sometimes I do notice as my thoughts discontinue to make sense. Pieces quit adding up, and sometimes I find myself asking myself what in hell I picturing, because it didn't make any form of sense. Then I realize that I'm not asleep, and that my curiosity had dragged me away from this possibility. So to keep my fingers away from cigarettes left in my bag, I press myself hard against the conversations we'd shared.

      They say a good woman will pick you apart, and I wonder if a good women worries so much. If a good women wants what I want, if I met that criteria at all. Sometimes I find myself lost in a sea of my own quiet wishes, silent dilemmas... and I wonder what a good women would think of it all. I can pick apart the violent and the vibrant and the various faults. But I can't pick between the elements which test time and stretch boundaries. I can't pick the parts that grow together so tightly, forming a wall of reluctant guessing and aggressive sighs. I wonder if a good women knows what it feels like to be helpless, to be broken. To be drowning in self-pity as my body deteriorates, like the attitude itself is a sort of pure chemical, burning and breaking down the pieces until my eyes feel raw with nervousness.
     I drop a box, and she doesn't stir. Awake for twenty hours or more, working hard, a steady stream of productivity I often see yet can't manage to slip into. I want to swim further into the world with this attitude, but creeping slow like a snail never makes you feel strong. She's able. She's resting. And I'm awake wondering why things aren't different. Last night I found the benefit of my body pressed against that of my lover's, the familiar torso. The better half, as I often like to joke. Much stronger, much less optimistic, somehow perfectly mixed in the thick air of heavy arms against my pale, bruise-able, breakable skin. And I feel like a perfectly ill porcelain doll, so gently held. Only sometimes am I strong enough for play, and even then I'm left with working against the constant possibility of soreness. Still these are the only moments in which I feel as if I am satisfying those primal needs of another, and I lack so often I disappoint myself. Blood pulsing through veins, much like test tubes occasionally being prodded for information before spilled into a vat of uncertain contents.
      I'm a warm being, that's the most I can promise. Just a hammock braided from toilet paper; wound thickly enough to represent strength, yet falling apart as use continues. And even if it's ginger use, the wear still tears through the tedious fabric. And it's all a work for show, that never shows very well. Just bits of wood-pulp degrading in a giant tank of shit over a period of time which hopefully ends much shorter than intended.

     I assume she's not dreaming of toilets, or hammocks, or sex with my boyfriend. These are all things I'm daydreaming of in the dead of night, at the ass-crack of dawn, after the first call of morning. As the hours stretch, my patience wears. Like an ass through a hammock made of toilet paper.