Moments Frozen

Yesterday slips through my fingers and is carried away by the wind to a place I can only surmise is happier than here. Here. Here I sit in an empty room on a piss stained mattress staring off into oblivion as poison flows through my veins. Here I sit with numb calloused lips burnt and quivering as my eyes roll back into my head trapped in the rapture - eyes half closed like an angel in a Caravaggio.

Gott weiss ich will kein Engel sein.

I’m not an angel, God would never take me. I’m not an angel, but I have fallen from considerable heights into the deepest abysmal depths. I live for the high and nothing more. I am gebbeth. Hollow. Dead.

Silver Bells

Through the thick fog of falling snow I see Christmas lights blinking on and off accented with humming neon. Skid-row wino dive-bar hotspot beckoning me like a lighthouse steering a mariner away from the jagged rocks into a calm harbor, so does the drink take me away from here, from hustling bustling Christmas caroling and consumerism, into a dark quiet place where I can be alone with my pain. It’s frightfully cold and I feel the frigid metal of a nine millimeter tucked squarely into my waistband burn and sear my flesh, but I carry it anyways “just in case.” I’m more paranoid these days, constantly looking behind me and inspecting dark corners searching for the bogeyman. Or maybe it’s the crystal and lack of sleep playing shrewd tricks with my brain.

It’s been four years now, four Christmas’s long ago, you and I decided to end it - as the quiet snow and wind and heroin whispered my name beckoning me outside into their nether-realm and away from your warm bed. Four Christmas’s ago I walked away like a scared shitless asshole and never looked back because I was proud and inhumanly selfish. So there’s nothing left now but a rail-thin mass of putrid flesh with rotten teeth and purple arms, where once there was... something. What remains now is an empty shit-vessel hopeless nothing: fucking, dying, and frying.

And you may not see it but I wear a preposterous chain, twisting and winding, which I continue to build link by link and yard by yard every step I take and every second I breathe.

Hell is cold and I pull up a stool next to Judas Iscariot and order a shot of whiskey… and “keep them coming” cause it’s Christmas and an excuse to get fucked up cause it’s but once a year and I’m here to spread some Christmas good cheer.

Hypothetical

Hello?

Hey, how are you?

Fine. um… who is this?

It’s me. How have you been?

….

Are you there?

Yeah, I am.

Look, I understand if you don’t want to talk.

No, don’t hang up! Yes. I want to talk.

Are you sure?

No, I really want to talk. How are you?

Good.

To be completely honest with you I never thought I’d speak to you again.

….

I don’t know what to say… well, I do, I’ve rehearsed this moment hundreds of times and now it’s happening… and I don’t know what to even say.

You don’t have to say anything, just speak.

I miss you.

Can I ask you a question?

Yes, anything.

Do you think things could ever be the same between us… the way they were?

I like to think that in a perfect world they could…

And I know you ardently believe this world is extremely flawed and imperfect.

…

Why aren’t you saying anything?

Well, I uh….

I know you’re still using.

…

Say something.

I… I can’t tell you what it is you need to hear.

So there it is. My undoing is your undoing is our undoing.

No, It’s not that easy.

I know, believe me I know honey. But it’s all written out in black and white and I…

What?

It’s just I wish I would have called you tonight and you would have told me something different.