spilling shards

at work this morning, in the bathroom fleeing dirty dishes and soapsuds and customers asking, miss, do you think i can get a refill?, in the bathroom, door locked, leaning against a wall breathing deeply, i open my eyes and my face in the mirror is old and strange.

i need to get more sleep.

i'm jealously protective of my apartment, snapping at the hipsters who come in to sign their lease while i'm hungover at the kitchen table in my underwear, eating peanut butter from the jar.

some nights our noses lead us in the right directions, and those quiet hopeful gatherings become loud parties where we can eat cookies and curry and sit on the porch till we get too cold, wander inside to get lost and then dance while someone throws baby powder over us in great rolling clouds so the next morning we'll wake groggy and snowy white.

(& some nights we'll walk through pish posh neighborhoods avoiding each other's stupidly welling eyes, lashing out with these painful things we never even mean, or really remember. some nights you dumb-drunk smash glasses in the bedroom, boozy breath on my ear in the morning.)

i was tongue-tied all day till our nighttime countertop exultations.

day job

today they're playing the songs that tug a little embarassingly at my heartstrings, mournful ballads of battleground infusions and whiskey breath demise. and today all the tourists seem to hail from far-off green places with more than a hint of twang; i can't stop staring at my new bike in the corner aching to be ridden but i can't help but picture it tearing through a different set of streets than these indifferent pavements.

she already had something going with her scooter by her side and her sparkly headband askew, but when she hocked a loogie onto michigan avenue she really had me hooked.

my thirsty throat needs more than this, and my trembling toes agree. i'm not really anything but satisfied, but this world keeps whirling a little too fast, and these long hours of elbows on countertops give me far too much space for projections. you know how it is.

& that fucking fiddle gets me every time.

pulse

i would offer you my pulse but honestly it's too erratic these days and always to impose on anyone but myself; i would offer you something else of myself to save you but i'm not sure salvation's what you need.

i rode up the path by the lake yesterday afternoon and watched girls running through a thick blanket of white fuzzy dandelions like wading through snowdrifts in deep chicago winters, or like the way our dog used to leap over the waves of thick tall grass in the pasture behind our house.

i tell too many stories about old jobs and old lives and old places in general; i've an answer for everything and i kind of wish i didn't anymore. i wish more was of the new. how long have days been slipping away so fast, without me even noticing? magical and exciting adventures, the breathless moments that seem the most important of all, are only in these stories, lately.

i need something slow.