The fear

She, in a chair, her face directed anywhere but at mine. At the tv mostly is all she can think to stare at since I, here, drunk and awkward, have just made it known by the hour of night I came trotting in and the smell I am sure I have carried in with me. Awkward is the tone from the silence and the pressure to speak up with any kind of friendly greeting, or make a comment about something I noticed that had occurred that night, day, or present moment. Though these are the standard walk in the door lines, they are rendered useless only because I'm drunk and am expected to act as such, which I most defiantly will if I say anything at all. And with that goes the hopes of being respected at all, shattered, instantaneously as I sit perched on the couch filled with angst; because she knows I'm drunk and anything I utter will, all of it, have a stupid drunk connotation to it. It will all come out fast and opinionated, like she hopes it won't. Everything I think right now will be labeled with an after thought to her before she even hears it. That after thought: shut the fuck up. So I ponder on how to be outgoing and chatty, normal and whimsical, and I fail because I know my situation as much as she does and I feel paralyzed to persuade myself, her, or the atmosphere at all in any other direction. It is an impossible feat from the first word I say, the first letter is already tainted with drunk intentions. "IM druuuuunk, and I'm goin to sleep." That went well, as long as I don't stumble up the stairs, I'll seem as if I'm not only ok with my situation, but I can handle it responsibly.

Well I will say, between this or that, the worst of the drunk, fucked, and lost, or that of the true, sober, trust, I've found the in between ground, and it is more fun to be one or the other. That night I thought about myself, my hands and the heat, not the sheets and cloth and the space in between what I was surrounded by. It is a difference within what you concern yourself with directly before you are able to sleep. The immediateness of the idea lets an intimacy into the air between that still moment and me. Though as I fell deeper into it, it all became part of nothing, but at the same time it was the only thing. Then the screws came loose and lucid thoughts ran on connected and relevant only to the previous by one of any of the thousand inspiring strands to could have been followed. It was lastly something to depend on, this metamorphosis of reality right before sleep, the combination of human and surroundings. How can one remember what road he took, the kind of genius struck, to reach nothing, to sleep? What was I trying to say? One will try to fall asleep fifty times; he won't remember the fifty first thing he thought of that moved him to sleep. Though, it is all one thing, one running time, and one over used metaphor that is the river. I wish we still had infinite darkness in our world instead of lights covering every appliance, saving the dark from its eclipse on our cities. The only place we can find the polar left and right is in the human now. When they laughed I thought I was smarter, but the smartest thing is to hold that quiet assumption keeping you from joining and laugh as hard as you can. This is only true if you don't want it, the pursuing of the constant, the knowledge of this responsibility to never stop thinking. Where did the belief, the truth that is only to be believed to be true, all go? And, if it wasn't promised here at this moment, who promised the future would hold any salvation? It must have been my soul. What right does my soul have to dictate my beliefs and further more the decisions about my future? Then again, I should be glad that it has a hell of a lot to say. Who doesn't love a demanding soul?

Then I slept.