“Hurry,” was what she said…in my dream and what I wish to hear every morning but I woke up and that’s not what she said, I don’t know what she said, and she’s been dead awhile. I’ve known a lot of people that are dead now, but she bothers me the most. I’ll be in a bar, we went to a lot of bars, and I’ll think I see her and think it’s her and inside I feel a chill, like a little tickle, and I’ll shrug my shoulders like she’s scratching my back and giggle and twist and more than once a bartender has cut me off, totally harmless, but drunk nonetheless and should’ve probably been home I have a cat to feed and he’s kind of needy.

The mornings are always a fog. It’s a hard count how many bedrooms I’ve woken up in, heavy double digits, and in the dark it could be any one. I instinctively reach for my glasses every morning and if they’re not next to me next to a glass of water they very well be next to an empty beer bottle…on the floor, I may be on the floor.

My work means very little to me. I’ll arrive drunk from the night before with unbrushed teeth. I feel at the moment reality has given me a reprieve…life is taking it easy on me but life has a current to it like wind or water and I wait for the storm or an undertow or a piano to fall on me. I live an interesting life and interesting people seem to survive but barely…interesting to me anyway, I think I’m interesting…maybe my life is boring.

And still, it’s still her and I. We live together. I’m still as lonely as I was when she was alive…still as intoxicated on a too frequent basis. I’m still not sure where she is, how she feels. “Does she think about me?” In bed on my side and upset and sick dizzy thinking words before my eyes against the white white walls in my room trying to remember those little framed pictures she had with those stupid fucking inspiring statements like “Live for yourself,” and “Go to the lake!” Shit. That shit was so stupid when she was alive…it’s still stupid, but she was alive…we never went to a lake.