second person

You sit down and you rub your hands on your jeans and imagine the grime wearing into the denim with each hard sweep from your sweaty palm. It reminds you to do the laundry. It makes you wonder why you're nervous all the time. You look down at your pants and worry if you're a dirty person. Not disgusting dirty, just a little foul around the edges. You think maybe you are and perhaps it is how you always will be. Perhaps this is the deal and there is nothing that will change your hand. You meditate on this fate. You sit with it. There is no changing what cant be changed, it’s as simple as that. This doesn’t comfort you but it’s as far as you can think on the subject.

You light up a cigarette and take a sip of your beer. It is another in a series of beers you have had this evening. You had a few before class while you read and flirted with a girl online. These made you yawn all through lecture and you remarked to yourself to take it easy the following week. After class you went to a rock club where you couldn't hear anything and had a few more beers with a friend while standing outside the crowd and leaning on the bar. Then you had a beer while eating jalapeño poppers at a steak shop in the lower east side, where you whined to your friend about heartache and rejection and he nodded and wore a half grin and you wondered if he was taking mood stabilizers. Then you came home and opened up another beer. And saw as the bottles piled up on the kitchen table.

You sit at the computer and you check your email just to see if maybe… You meander on the internet for a few minutes. Searching for something but you don’t know what. You open up a word document then go back to browsing and hope something inspires you. Nothing does. The television is off. The fan is on. You roll another cigarette. You take another sip from your beer. The keyboard gleams with residue from your oily pores.