Conversations Among the Ruins

I don't know how to write.
Or treat people that I love.

I don't make the coffee right.
My hair is a mess.

Not one of those cool
messes
either.

Like. I

feel like I need to
throw up a lot more
often lately.

I don't know how to
go back to Chicago
because I don't

recognize it and I
don't know what to do
to motivate

myself. In regards
to everything.

Some days I
wake up a lot more
sick than

others.
So I lay in bed,
but I can't lay there

still
either.

Somedays
something

big

is
missing.

Nothing keeps
leaving me
voicemails and

all it says is
"I'm here. Here
with you in your

giant orange
shawl and
three sizes too

big sweat
pants."

Nothing says
"Just stare out
at the gray

sky and eventually
you will see me.

Sometimes I
am all you feel
and I was just

calling to
remind you that
no matter what

it seems
I am always
here."

Nothing tells me
to do it tomorrow.

Nothing keeps
the canvas
on the floor

six hundred
of the wrong
layers because

it isn't done.
Nothing grips

to my job,
as that is a

massive something
to consume
my self growth

with. Nothing
stares at my
phone with me

and tells me
"You don't feel
like talking."

Nothing is a
straight jacket
I cuddle up in

like a toddler.
I cannot accept
nothing but it

shows up and we
sit quietly
together.

It is never ok
in my mind

to be
exhausted -
no matter how

many hours I
work in a week or

how many times I
take out the
trash, do the

dishes, water the
plants.

A long time ago
a girl had

nothing. So she
made
nothing

everything and
nothing loves

to keep sending out
it's manuscripts.

To this head.
On this chilly
gray afternoon.

Nothing is a nice
bath tub that when
sat in for too long

drowns you.

Slow comfort.

Absent of
life.

Today I painted twenty
paintings over each other
on the same

canvas.

The canvas sits
out there, in the dark,
and it isn't even

started.

Do I say I'll
do things just so I
don't do them and

hate myself for it?
I have every choice
and opportunity

daily
to live a full,
beautiful

life. Instead I sit.
Smoking. Thinking.
Listless with all these
lists. Ash. Look over.

When did the
cigarette
burn?

"It will be different
when I move." so I
move and move and

move and whatever it
is about me that makes
these parts of me

is predicated by the
fact of which equates
the obstacle as

me and myself
and my
disease.

Have I ever told you?
That I am an addict?

I can get addicted to
spraying spray paint or
cappuccinos and

cigarettes I only smoke
the start half of and
not writing right or
irregularly watering the

plants or barrel
crimping my hair
on Thursday

mornings. I get
compulsive about
ruining paint brushes

and
refusing to buy new
tights for work and
staring at my toenails

thinking "I should
paint them" instead of
doing so.

I am a basket case
on top of a pistol
safe in the closet where

the only constant is
dust and potential
for disaster.

I remember and I
forget and I think
life is swell except I

forget that my disease
is just like so many
that so many others
have.

Where once you take
the medicine you
feel fine - which, actually

hold on my medicine
isn't a pill it is
empathy and communication
with others

like me and it's
free however -

when the medicine
makes me feel better
I tend to think

that I am.

And I'm not.

I am playing a game
of survivor - lost in the
island of my own

head.

I'm in a prizem
of constant comparison
of the person

I should be
and the person
I actually am.

Sitting in this
art studio,
breathing in

spray paint
air.

I eat ice cream for
motivation at
living.

Running on empty
with a full
expensive

tank.

What have I been
writing?

Nothing.

What am I painting?

A pregnant
shadow queen and

her light
counter part.

Just as I
think to myself
in regards

to my core
being I sigh

and stare
like a maniac
at the canvas - at the

blank screen where
the only reflection

is the version of
myself that I
arranged all up for

show
on a shelf too
high to bother with
dusting

"Please just
really. Turn into

something."

I get so lost in the end
product that I waste
the time

to produce
anything. Deeper and
deeper and

deeper I surrender
nothing.

"I feel like shit."

I say
flatly.

I have
zero
motivation to

get out of bed.
We talk in
tricycle wheel

circles as I walk
through K mart,
buying myself a

ten dollar
engagement ring
because

That
will spare me
conversations
at work.

I get dizzy
when I don't
understand

what it is
I need.

Or where or
who or what

I am on these
days where I

wake up just to
make coffee so I
can lay in

bed
with it.

I feel alone
and like nobody

in the world
knows me.

At what point did I
become so blindingly
unusual but absolutely

the same
as everything
not everybody

around me?

Sometimes I
am the
wallpaper.