you are tired—in
more ways than one.
you are tired in your
bones, tired in your
brain, tired in your
body, tired in your
distant associations.
you are cold—in
more ways than one.
you are cold in your
july sun-soaked bed,
cold in a home that you cannot
bring yourself to call your own,
cold in your far-flung ache for
something you already have—
but not
quite in the way
you wish you did.
you are tired-and-cold,
cold-and-tired,
and everything around you
seems to hurt in your
unseen struggle.
incandescent rips in the
fabric of the night—barely
visible on warm-and-new junctures—
are brighter, in a sad sort of
way.
you have never before
felt so close
to the sky.
(you have never
felt so close
to anyone
before).
the weather-beaten picture of
your grandfather—tacked onto the
left side of your mirror, as it has been
for the past five years—stares at
you with a new-found
sort of
betrayal.
it hurts.
(he never hurt you.
he wouldn’t dare).
he would bring the blue
doritos and a mars bar
every wednesday morning and
he would cradle you
in his arms as
he sucked on death,
white and sleek and alive in his
fingertips.
when he died it was sort of like he
was falling asleep and
it was sort of beautiful,
in a sad sort of way.
but now, when you
are
cold-and-tired
tired-and-cold
you think that it might
be different.
you think that maybe
it is living that is like falling asleep
and it is dying
that is like coming
awake.
(the cigarette was
so full of
earth-shattering verve, so full
of earth-shattering death, after all,
when it
killed him).
