Today I gave some thought to burning bridges, found myself on a list or two of crossed off names, the usual. Wrote you a letter I shouldn't've sent. Spent some time awkward in stairwells and on park benches. Watched a kickball game I couldn't play.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm lonely these days. I keep trying to write, but not really. I think about a boy in England, cramped hands writing on commuter trains, busier than mine. I just wear holes in one out of every pair of socks, burn through my clothes and my cigarettes with too much arduous walking. I think about dead men I met in passing, how sometimes I think I see them in the street. How I always watch for their cars, all of them, the van that smells of fish and lysol, the white bronco with a shit muffler, the green station wagon with necklaces hanging from the mirror. 

We can promise all you like to walk away.

I keep sounding so trite, you know, like I'm always on stage? I'm not an easy actor, and my metaphors are stupid and I'm not sure we're listening any time we speak.

I've been feeling pretty delirious, lately. It's something between lack of sleep and all the wrong songs coming on when I'm feeling weak, weird dreams and weird conversations. I'm running a fever, I'm grinding my teeth, I'm constantly remembering how fucking lucky I am and I am constantly on the way to the hunt. 

We smoke our cigarettes in six minutes. I pour my bile into small plastic boxes. I make casual references to a complicated past and you do your best to act appropriately.

You hold your adorable animal up to the screen. The love of your life grins back, six hours into the future. I give my passerby hello. I'm so glad to see you happy, my shit is falling apart.

Shining canines behind dark glasses make me feel like a jackass, a hanger-on. Let no man tell you age is anything. I am a small girl in legwarmers before these little boys who tower over. Casual remarks that are daily struck from the records. Over time I will use fewer and fewer words until my tongue just clacks in churning silence. The message remains the same.

I have had this stuffed dog since I was two years old. Sometimes I think he is the only person I have ever loved and not also hated. This summer, on a ferry from Connecticut to Long Island, my mother told me--

Really there is no good time for interludes. 

No movement of mine sways uninterrupted.

Some limb is always hanging in the air, a relic.