My Life Minus You
I have become a turned chair, a chair that sits pretty in the corner, a piece of furniture, ignored. I am somebody’s ghost, haunting preferred to a holding, I am no longer tactile, invisible. I am a headless flower, dried out in a scum filled vase; I have become next week’s mulch, unbelievable. What has become of me? I cannot disclose any personal information. I am a bank teller’s vocal chords and I scream in monotony. I cannot talk of anything of any importance. What is your account under? Don’t slip on your mistakes. Unbalanced, probably. All unbalanced and anxious, alone and gone. It’s not that you are gone, it’s that I am here alone. Can you sign here please? Point of wastes; do not slip on your way down. Please take a ticket and be seated next to the lady who lost her face. A beating heart that has stopped is not that bad in comparison. Bee-like waistcoat, dreamboat. Dire throated dick. I wear cherry lip balm because the real thing tastes like aluminum on my tongue. You have a question? When all the answers are in a foreign language, write them down and kiss your knees for a translation. Unperfected, imperfected – unaffected. That is your number. In all my ineffectiveness I see you’re lost too, a little cra-zee. Don’t mean maybe, yes I’m crazy too. Nobody’s woman, nobody’s girl, take me away to somebody again. Close the door, close the window and drain the bath that beckons me with razor glinting with hope and all my happy endings, soak in the hope and myself too. Take me away, sweet chariot, coming to lock me in a hearse, drive me away to hell or worse, nobody’s girl is dead and gone. He told me the bank closed at five, five in the afternoon, it’s still light outside and the cars have faces that zoom at the approaching moon. I lie in bed and watch it swing around me, as if it were rotating and not this big chunk of greasy sludge we try to save everyday. I write for you, and me and all those that need to too but it drinks me up and swallows me, turns me into the worm at the bottom of the tequila bottle. I’m consumed and starving. I built a pyramid of fire and lit it before you, drew out SOS seven times in the sand, breathed for you every time the clock ticked over to 11:11 and still I am soaring out of control. I stare at a person’s imperfections, concentrate on a small anomaly in order to block out the voice telling me the door will be shutting soon. Welded over, my hands they burn alive and dream of a time before nails bit to the quick never sting again, before treacherous feet dripping, knees kissing, melting tears can stem all those feeble feckless fears and begin a new dawn in a night of moon watching. I am only a moonbeam I tell myself; don’t dare to turn my head to the faceless woman, whose body echoes my own, who wears clothes like mine. Who is me, alone too. I take what is left of everything and run before there is nothing left at all, run faster than the cars that zoom along like metal beetles, run faster than your provocative shadow that never forms a real body. I run before everything I ever had is gone for good. And scratch off my wrinkles before a musty mirror in a bathroom that smells of cat.
