Stream

The smell of coffee haunts my memory like a seductive fiend. Ready to pounce- forever ready to destroy me inside my protective barrier. I wear my face like a mirror and my eyes like holes; deep, deep wells. They are dry now, but they aren’t always; no, not always. Leave my soul to drown in spilled tears or to die of loneliness in my withered heart. All death is the same in its finite quality. All life is the same in its finite quality. Infinity is an illusion, much like the number zero, or the concept of nothingness. Time is the greatest lie that man ever told.

Thoughts run through my head like great trains. Like great trains they crash into each other because the conductors are gone or they have never existed. I ring the bell signaling insanity but no one is there to hear it, least of all me. I am here, but not to hear. I am here to live, on the verge of living. Not yet. Not yet. Just wait. All tiptoes and ready to go when the race begins, and I don’t know who I’m racing. Maybe it’s the trains. The train and the time that is never right, the clock runs too fast and the sand is running out. I want to say things but the trains drown me out; their perpetual crashes and the resulting chaos drive me to run for cover. Damage control is expert, familiar, but there is no progress. I tread water like a pro. I will tread until I drown. Hear me out.

He in red and she in pink wearing the same colored denim. They make a cute pair. He in his white pumas and she in her black, pointy, stiletto boots; he’s cute and she’s adorable, but she’s unimpressed and he’s bored. She’ll talk, though, because she feels like she has to. Because she feels like she has to date someone like him. She needs to fall in love. How close is she to the love she wishes she could feel? How close and how far must she dive into those blue green or hazel eyes that she can’t remember once she turns around? Dating is a game and relationships are tentative agreements, much like marriages are business contracts merging a lot more than monetary assets. She smiles because he is adorable, and he smiles because he knows it. She can fall in the moment, for the moment, until a better offer comes along. But she’ll still be alone.