Parched

Aloneness. It’s a strange visitor. I don’t think I’ve ever felt aloneness so keenly . . . why has he returned?

It’s my fault. It must be my fault, I muse.  I’m doing something wrong, and have driven everyone away from me. What other explanation can there be? My mind keeps circling around this notion, as I sit here and while the hours. How could I go from having a life, to not having one? To having so many things, to virtually nothing.

Once again, my grip upon hope begins to weaken . . . I can feel see my palm, invisible, but to my mind’s eye, start to fade, no longer willing to touch it. I was about to take the vial, but now, I am retreating back. The coffee house is brought back into vision.

 

I hate to see people having a good time, because all I can do is work. All I can do is sit here, and drivel away my time away. There is no truth. I’m supposed to be talking to people, seeking them out, getting to know them; I should be participating in this great event that they call ‘life.’ And yet, there is no joy and no love to share in. The colors and shades and beauties which they see, speckled across their life, to me remains obscure- all I can see is a blank page. A vast, white world of nothing. Words will soon paint themselves across it, but they will be tasteless. Again, they will have no flavor.

All want is to love, and for someone to understand me. Such a cliché line. Laughable, really. I wonder who came up with it? I don’t even think it’s possible . . .

 

The person who knows me really well, will know that I drive myself upon competition, I idly muse. I tap my pen along the table’s edge. That insatiable desire to prove myself . . . words repeat themselves. Phrases. I continue to write. I know it doesn’t matter. I write out these words, no one will care, and no one will even turn around to look at them- it’s always the same. No one can hear what I say. I c**k my ear, and tap my pencil upon the metal grate. We have faulty reception, here. I am bottled behind this wall, closed against the mix of voices, shouts, and gaiety that surrounds it. . .

Metal whines against metal. The vision of the coffee house fades- I feel like I’m in a mechanical room, auditing for one of the prisoners . . .

 

I look at the table across from me. Once again, realism comes back into view. The man is leaning towards the woman, and he is inserting his smile, with much gusto, across the table from her. She is laughing, and acting coy in response . . .

I look down at my random meal things, which I have thrown together. I try to vary up my life a little. I eat crackers rather than bagels, when I go to the café. A tea with soy milk on top. This song again . . . the rattle is making my ears spin, as much as this random drivel spins through my ears. I wish they would all shut-up. There is a man, who keeps walking to and fro before me, messing with his camera. I take it that he is doing some work for the Bigby staff . . .

I’m really tired of being hungry. I need to stop eating crackers. The carbs are bad for me. I must bring myself not to be bitter. Bitterness is bad for me, much like carbs. It seems more difficult to cut out the bitterness, though. It is so much easier to drop the carbs. Bitterness, is comprised of something addictive, something that is much stronger than carbs. It’s like chewing on a piece of toffee, and the juices seep out and enter your bloodstream. You can press them, slowly, and watch it drain . . . watch the flavors as they drip.

I want to taste bitter envy. Bitter scorn. Bitter pride. There are too many variations that comprise the flavor of bitterness, the label is too vast- you cannot possibly put it down to one or two flavors. Tens of millions of types. It comes in too many shades . . .

My mouth begins to water.  I reach out. I need the taste of bitterness once more . . . Hope is no longer attainable, but Bitterness is close to me. It may fill me up, at least for a little while. I can’t get anything better right now. But we can’t always have A-quality sustenance-

 

I want . . .

Endless drivel-

pen scatters and falls.