With my last eight dollars I walked to the supermarket and shoplifted a bite sized sewing kit. Attached is a letter explaining my pleas, accompanied by instructions, for you to shoot needles into my arms, with which to make me rise.

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My best friend Mr. Coffee, has stated his implicit disapproval of his abuse. and refuses to quench my addictions. So I have stashed him inside my pillowcase, hidden at the foot of my bed, with the other empty bottles who I tell I’m not an alcoholic.

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Doctors ask too many questions. Age, weight and on and on, sliding around on a carousel lion, attempting to stay afloat while keeping with the rythm.

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Left hand caressing their precious clipboard, like an official badge authorizing them to poke and prod. Using the other quote Decartes in German.

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With my head hanging low, not for shame, but because I’m too tired to lift it up, I answer them with silence. I don’t have the answers.

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I thank the lord for google, where I can throw my incompetence and catch a costume of knowledge in return. and I read them a script of who I am, authored by a nameless font. Copy, paste.

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I unearthed a long forgotten shovel in the shed, and read my scars as a map, telling me where to dig for treasure, but returned wearing frowns and empty hands filled with a tangle of nails and screws. Who would have thought it possible?

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So in an attempt to hide them from myself, I dug fresh holes in the garden, and tossed them among the poppies I took from the florist every time she came to cut my hair. Calling them yesterday.

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I heard on the radio, a song that perfectly explains the way my breath tastes when I first wake up and it reminds me of you and how you used to hang your arm on the window when we were driving twice the limit. Throwing daydreams out the window for every bed we past. 

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So when I open up my toolbox, I discover that all my brushes have gone stale and paints have dried up. Someone has been looting my trash for the letters that I sent you but were returned without proper postage. They have been replaced with decaf and published in a scientific journal, in an attempt to explain schizophrenia.

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They were drawn for my eyes only and never meant to be seen. I forget toll road fees on purpose so I might get pulled over or not be allowed back. And I refuse to show proof of the insurance I left in Seattle.

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Like words that I mouth to you and expect that you can see me from six hundred miles away. It makes sense in a way, somehow I can hear you through all that distance. And see you snoring softly on the kitchen floor.

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Don’t you remember how I taught you not to bark at strangers. Injecting chloroform into your heels every time you tried to run away.

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I want to glue crickets to your shoes, in hopes that we won’t have to go out in the rain, burning our socks to keep us safe.

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So I hold my hands to the wall, trying to decode every thump and thud, convincing myself I’m holding your hand in morse code.