Menticide.

In the shower the scrapes sting anew, the fibrin dissolved in the heat of water bearing down upon the bruises. I’d like to believe that I haven’t been thrashing about more than usual, that the booze has weakened my cell walls so much that everything within is finally making its great escape without, but this, I know, is an unlikely scenario.

I only barely dress the wound beneath my slacks, infection of some concern but ignored. The pain is my penance, I think, a reminder that instead of the coveting and the vanity and the false idols, I should be practicing patience, temperance, grace. But it is easier to write with it, the tapping of keys synced with the throbbing ache a perfect backbeat to the rhythm of run-on sentences. I have become the queen of run-on sentences.

I gave myself a week to booze and booze hard, and try as hard as I might a part of me still believes I could have done more. I'm still breathing, after all. But these thoughts are fleeting, though fleeting is the wrong word; they're more translucent, there always but just barely so that sometimes I think I'm perfectly satisfied with this kingdom I have constructed. And that is when words fail me.

Are things really so complex? If this sounds sad, it's not, but still it is whatever it is, whatever I and you and we make of it, together. It's everything and nothing at once, and who knows which way the coin will flip. It's 50-50. But still.

Seeing is believing but I feel blind; mostly I think I need to stop listening to songs about recreational drug use. But still. I used to believe in singularity, in defining moments with gravitational pulls so strong anything before or after gets lost along the event horizon. Not like the desperation implicit in the first kiss, but the connection forged shortly after as his fingertips slid beneath the lacy neckline of that shirt I haven’t worn since. I believed everything before and after that moment is changed. Now? I'm not sure.

I'm not sure I want to believe in things I’ll never know for sure.