Conversations Among the Ruins

It was that
midwest rip in the
freezing weather
finally, around March.

It was warm and I had
new red dye in my hair,

ripped capri pants,
and a sparkly scarf.

I basically spent that
spring in therapy and
shopping for myself,

or getting my hair done,
or buying rocks.

This guy and I had broken up
and I had decided,

if I ended up with a
shit head like that
because of what drinking

my meals and
hours away

did to my decisions,
I should really
do myself a favor

and begin to re evaluate
what the fuck I really
thought was acceptable

for my life.

It's like a trip to the moon,
where something so fucking
stupid happens that you're just

finally done. It's funny,
for me, the bottom
wasn't torching

glass pipes with
one of the sixteen
house blow torches.

It wasn't waking up
on the Blue Line
covered in blood
and spit.

It wasn't
being pulled
into a dumpster at
sunlight.

It wasn't standing
over my boyfriend's
casket or his

little brothers
casket
a year later.

It wasn't catching
my fall
with my face

in front of twenty
club rats and putting
my hands to their

throats. A real life
Sissy Spacek as
Carrie.

No. My bottom
was when I went to
re invent myself

and survive only -
my problems were
the only part of myself

that stayed. No matter who
and what I shape shifted as,
it was all

the exact same. It was in
the spring of 2009, and
this total loser

said I was a fucking lunatic
and dumped me because
filming a behing the music

for ZZ Top
was more important
than assuring me that

I mattered.

Today I respect
his path, because from
his I was given

mine. I remember a
day when I had first
stopped drinking.

I paced up and down
the line of the restaurant
I worked in sixty seven
times.

I became obsessed
with somebody
that enjoyed ignoring me

completely, but I went
to the beach
by myself

often and I lived
out that phase of
being sick and sad and

desperate but
knowing better.

Above all I
knew better. It took

years to act better.

Sometimes though these
Petty songs make me
smell that spring

midwest air. I have
come so far I swear
to God but it's still

just me and this
chair with this
screen and

all ten dozen
eleventy milion
of me and who

and what and
where I've been
and gone and re
visited to just to

leave
again.