Not With That Gait

         His thoughts are soup. His eyes blink and stare, fixed on the distance without focus on the present. Lips are cracked, dry, crusted and starved. As his eyelids close, they scrape slowly down and back up, like windshield wipers across dry glass. Is he aware of this torment? Answers are slow, without much thought, basic and concrete. It must be hard to speak when your lips are stuck to each other. When your tongue isn't able to slide because of the dehydration. But he isn't dehydrated. He soils himself quite regularly. Nostrils won't allow a virus to take him, because the hair protruding is bushy and jungle-like. It retracted from his crown and extended out the nares. I wonder when I'm speaking to him like he's two years old if he thinks "Fuck you." Fuck you, too.

         You are trapped, friend. Your body is no longer the vessel that carries you through life. Its your prison. The walls are your inability to stand well enough to be trusted to walk on your own. The bars are the brain that served you throughout life, now betrays you with visions of people who aren't here to see you. There is no food to complain about, because no one has the time to feed you properly. You get just enough to prolong this pain. Communicating your basic needs is no longer possible, so its up to strangers to manage them. They are the guards. You are told when you can, when you can't, why you can't, how long you can't. Its forever. Its until your family faces the reality that you are not coming back from where you've gone. The person that laughed with them, cried with them, loved them, hurt them, raised them, they're lost. That person only exists in memories, photographs, and dreams. What is left behind is pure sadness.

         Maybe it was the alcohol. There is no maybe here, though, friend. You destroyed your own future. Poisoned it with willful and reckless abandon. You borrowed from your future to pay for the present. Drowned your brain to kill whatever pain you had dwelling deep inside. It never did die, though. The chase ended when your body was so far gone that pissing yourself, shitting yourself, and needing the help of strangers when given up on by family became your life. I don't even know your name. I just know your room, the smell of when you need to be changed, and the sadness someone must feel for you when they think of you now.

         Unfortunately for you, I bet there is no sadness, though. The impression you stain people with is one of hate, rage, darkness and depression. The life you lived hurt others, either on purpose or subsequently. Or both. Alcohol, selfish actions, they force this pain into other's souls. Your gross inability to cope created clouds over them, relentless rain on their backs, burning winds to their face, and a never-ending mountain to climb. You lashed out with sharp abuse, cutting to ribbons those that gave a shit. This, of course, is my assumption about you. No one has called to see how you are doing. No one has tried to visit you. They won't sign the paperwork to allow your life to be less about treatment and more about comfort. You know what? I don't care about who you were. I treat you as I would treat anyone. It doesn't matter if you deserve it, because its who I am.

         The alarm sounds and I know you are at it again. The look in your eye when you are discovered says that you know what you've done, and that you have no idea where you are or who I am. I feel your fear as you are put back into your bed. Another prison for you to want to escape. Except you won't. Effort doesn't always equate to effect. Medications would keep you comfortable, compliant, and stable. Again, you don't deserve that, not yet. You have to eat your soup.

--Written in one continuous thought stream--