Dance all night, go to work.
Weather makes you consider things differently, like the amount of food that sits in your kitchen. And whether or not a day without food might bother me, as it typically doesn't. Scanning the cabinets confirmed my worse fears this afternoon, and thirty minutes after dark settled over this sleepy town, I pulled my black boots over my feet and directed my buick to the grocery. It was either seniors or singles night, I can't tell which as there were so many elderly people cluttering the isles by their lonesome.
 I had previously assumed everyone was as concerned about the weather as I was, yet I didn't seem to overhear any conversation about ice or snow.
      Walking around a display of seven-up shaped like a tree, I happened to catch the shining familiar baldspot of a man that once tried to teach me fitness. His wife's plump, warm, glowing face poked gently out from underneath a turtleneck, covered in white woven snowflakes. The thick texture stretching over her hips in a way that would leave anyone shapeless, but still very presentable somehow. Her hair pulled up and tucked in the familiar early 1800's fashion she seemed to always favor while teaching. Her deep-rouge lipstick, the same color as always, asking timidly of my nature, and how it's settled.
      The strangest things relate to my life from breakfast at tiffany's, when holly golightly discusses how she makes up weather reports. This is how I feel when someone I highly respect asks me about my life, and how it's going. The truth is boring, it's a disappointment. Currently not studying, having failed out, and trying desperately to pull together some sort of education for myself is how I have been lately. How I've been lately is drunk, and honest. I've said things I thought about, then decided against. Then remembered in a moment of stark intoxication, when there's clearly words clinging to my chest; and I let them go. Lately I've been high as hell, staring down at all the people in my life who push the positivity into my heart like I never thought I'd hold.
      I told her how I've been going to school some, sprinkling in some truth by mentioning my roommates and how we interact with each other. It's not easy to explain that sometimes you have to let go of everything to gain something, and it can be even harder to explain the bittersweet collection of self-respect, deep understanding, and ability to accept regret. I haven't been at school. I haven't been taking care of myself.
      I've been learning nonetheless though, learning how to avoid the spins and throwing up. Not drinking my six dollar sparkling wine too quickly. Keeping my hair off of me neck when I'm far too warm. It's shit they can't teach you, nomatter how often it's discussed. My fingers longing for tobacco, entangled, trying hard to avoid eye contact, I was thinking about bodies and how sometimes they just seem to fit together, like pots and pans in a cabinet. The curves that lay against other curves, sometimes hard like steal or iron. Sometimes soft like aluminum, movable. During a faux conversation, I learned how to pretend like I'm perfectly in order. So when I eat this meal and take these drugs, I'll still be that person in a faux-conversation in her mind. Resting well, the way people want to see you when they know you're hurt... or you've lost something. I'll rest like a pan against a larger pan, perfectly stable against the wood. And in real life, I'm always tumbling out into the floor. Reality sprawled over the course of a highly-imagined life, images roughly recollecting to make conversations seem real, even when there was merely an exchange of looks and no words.
      Strangely, leaving the grocery, all I could think of were bodies and how they fit together. My sex-deprived brain oddly craving closeness, a person inside of me crawling out, awkwardly, timidly questioning the possibility of more. Will I push my muscles? Will I rely on my will to adapt to extreme pain? Will I get laid? Will I lay my lover? I might. Strange how being reminded of responsibilities I've tried hard to ignore seem to make me greatly crave the pleasure at hand I often am forced to ignore. Sometimes, I think it means I want more for myself that I'm allowing.


How have you been lately?