Most of all I’m sick of the make believe. The small talks and glad handings, the alibis and misdirections. All the people I nod to who I’d just as soon not see again. The chitter chatter while the sickness metastasized and death kept heaping it on. Pretending that I do anything but cause pain and delay the inevitable. Pretending that the words were anything other than desperation and neediness. The lie that I was ever here at all.
The lights are out and the movie’s gotten awkward. The couple was a couple and now they’re two people with an angry kitchen and a lot of words and tears. Clumsy words and then roll credits and the television is just another light, talking to itself as the shadows stir and stretch. Lying here, just part and pieces. Looking for a story to keep my insides out. Looking, always looking, for an off switch.
I turn on a light, I put earbuds in and turn the music on, all the songs on shuffle in my skull. I tap away at a touchscreen keyboard, the broken record I keep writing getting longer and more meaningless as I throw more words away. A little after midnight and I’m adding to the empty, Saturday staring right through me. Books and boxes and an unsurprising epilogue. The lights are on but nobody’s home. Locks and doors and a sheet in the window. All oh wells and fresh hells and grim ghosts dragging flesh around.