Inertia

A widowed fluorescent shudders bleach over malignant linoleum 

in a kitchen 

with not enough bench space.

A too steep spiral staircase ascends to the second floor 

of a house 

that will soon be demolished.

Water stains bloom across the ceiling like

memories eroding holes in whites and greys

above rooms coated autumnal 

by afternoons filtered

through fading 

bed sheet curtains. 

None of us were on the lease. 

We were the seventh season of that house

maybe the eighth

and the writers were getting sloppy.

Communal box wine. Communal chop bowl. Communal pube trimming scissors 

bleeding outlines in the shower. 

I was quick switching between states 

the way heat applied to a solid 

can make a liquid 

can make a vapor. 

Sweet like a kiss.

Nice like it wants something.

There were things I didn't know that I knew.

weeks / when I / could barely / speak / but made / a chorus / 

with / the white goods / my body / atrophied / by thought /

(then)

legs like pistons everything about me in flight endless ideas stifled by their size my mouth and eyes talking everyone into bed and a rage this fucking rage opaque like burnt glass myself and my anger holding each other down

She yelled at me

   Be better

         Just be better

And I wanted to be better. 

I did. 

I really did.

But actually I didn’t.

What I wanted was complete combustion 

though I could hardly move 

for the things 

I had done. 

I drove too fast on midnight arteries through red lights in a car that would soon be scrapped with a friend I would soon fall out with. They were trying to talk me down but my arguments were too compelling and too shrill. At The Gap I thought about my mother and the blood that would be on my hands and how I didn’t want to die, not really, just wanted

immersion

in a darkness removed from dichotomy

without noise but not silence

just something outside of it

not awake and not asleep and not dreaming either

just something other 

than any of this

I wanted to be suspended

static

in air moving so fast it becomes viscous

so swift I become a stillness

but a fall from that height

or any really

would have just been too short 

for that.