Tables, desks, floors, and beds.

I'm using every flat surface I can find to spread my life out on. I'm stacking up photos on top of books I haven't opened yet but pretend to know what they are about. There are cans of spray paint holding up sketch pads that I only use as a surface for my knife blade and an extension of the screams stuck in my throat. Things to burn: candles, receipts, lottery tickets. Things to recycle: cans, bar poetry, canvas. They alternate on these flat surfaces, sometimes merging into piles that are so cluttered I don't know what to do with what. There are pens, a screwdriver, first aid spray and bobby pins. Change and wrappers to things that save my life and keep my mouth moving. A plastic apple shoved full of blades that won't rot or rust. If I could pour my heart into that lifeless fruit of temptation I would. But tonight I'll keep it. I'll mix it with the sweat on my skin, the fluids on my sheets, the beer on my nightstand, the broken dreams my friend left on the old brown couch last night. I'll learn to play that song on guitar that I should be singing to myself that I pretend is for everyone who is gone. I'll draw road maps, leave detailed directions, carved and burned into my skin. A treasure map for the hunt of all the bullshit that gets listed here. From where my car sits tonight: first right, second right, third left, first left, fourth right. You'll pass the spot I last saw family; it'll be on the left. And you'll see where I spent my first year, trying to be all the things that I thought would make us happy that just tore us apart; it'll also be on the left. And if you go a little further, then go right, then second right, then follow that street till it ends You'll find some other haunted spot. There's a bunch of them, and this is one of the few I thought of, because I know that ghost is around. I can hear familiar voices and feel some of those familiar knots. I'm not nearly drunk enough for this tonight. But I am tired. Let's leave this unfinished.