burn, baby

i'm driving home after another needlessly stressful day on the job, blaring some JEW [clarity, of course] and sucking down a lucky strike. the failing light bounces off a shop window just so, coinciding with my current heading, the thrum of a helicopter, the smell of gasoline and cut grass, shit like that, stirring up some long-dormant soreness in my chest. fuck deja vu, this is present - and that's why it hurts.

the dorm room flickers in and out of existence: another power surge. we lay sprawled on the floor listening to this song, confused children trying to make sense of their shifting surroundings. nothing lasts. the song ends, we drift to sleep.

i wake up. a middle-aged guy in a convertible wants to race. i grunt my disapproval and annoyedly light another smoke. the colors change as the light continues to fade; motion resumes and mr. convertible speeds into the dusk.

you are smaller getting smaller but i still see you

love is born out of confusion. in order to love you must trust and in order to trust you must have something you are unsure about. the only thing i was sure about were the walls [they were slowly closing in on me, advancing subtly as if to remain unnoticed, but i was onto them.]. they're moving again.

inhale. exhale. don't forget to speed.

four years ago [holy fuck, has it really been four years?] i was a dumb kid hauling his stuff to school in a laundry basket [i had a lot less baggage then in all respects]. clean-cut, sharp as a tack, and, naturally, completely unprepared to be entrusted with any kind of responsibility. but that's the way it always goes, isn't it? i flick the remains of my second out the window, reaching for number three.

my first was filched from the console of her 93 corolla. that damned marlboro menthol burned before i lit it - why i ever did i'll never know. ready. aim. fire. the initial coughing fit nearly sent her car off the road, a shiny red omen of things to come. i regained my composure and set to finishing the smoke. i only got halfway.

the car lighter's cruel eye winks out and i resume combustion. i suppose i've grown wiser, older, wider since then, even though circumstances dictate that i've only just come full circle. my first year of school is behind me, again. there's no way to lose the first . . .

so many naps. the air conditioner, silent, is no longer her excuse. she sleeps all the time . . . i can never manage to when she's around. her face and music. so many skipped classes, so much ground lost. her face is music.

sometimes i think i managed to lose myself in her face.

after i returned home, my mother would weep and ask me where the aaron she used to know had gone. i couldn't feel anything. sleep. i only wanted sleep.

panic attacks, drugs, and therapy. my optimism had turned into a nigh unquenchable self-hatred. the roof was about to collapse.

three down. i realize that i've just turned onto seventh for no particular reason and take this as an excuse to light one more. i suppose i'm still medicating. nothing's changed here in years. there - that's the pizza joint i found the ten-dollar bill in after a soccer game in sixth grade. finders keepers, losers weepers.

i heard she flunked out of school last fall. my first thought was along the lines of "join the club", albeit more colorful, but i immediately related to how she must have felt. caleb, my longstanding best friend and a damned gracious man, told me she was working at walmart in kirksville to stay with her sorority sisters.

we're all so lonely.