4:00

I wrote this at 4:00.

It can get to the point, sometimes, to where even that nasty s**t is a better option. “Druggie” kids will always tell you they were bored and whatever if you ask them why. You wouldn't know, because only I ask them. Nobody else asks them, obviously. Against unwritten codes of being fakely important, in high school. That's all bull, I know, because I'm not one, because I'm not stupid enough to be. I'm just one that's smart enough to admit it all to myself.

So it was a better option. It's a plasticy feeling, unscrewing a child safety cap, not to mention you feel like a total f*g. It's like watching a kid's show with rubber puppets. Like drinking a hospital waiting room, with those s****y plastic toys everywhere. So I felt like a f*g drinking a waiting room, but it was still a better option, I felt, as I pressed down and turned until the cap gave, a little sticky from the previous, less pathetic usage, and the smell hits you first. Straight up artificial, like whoever the f**k they hired to tell the flavorists what a f*****g cherry smells like, they messed up big time. So I smelled the fruits, pardon the pun, of that b*****d's labor, as I brought the little bottle to my lips, felt the blade of it's mouth kiss me, tilted it up until gravity pulled the liquid down, down, onto my tongue, along the roof of my mouth, down my throat, little whatevers burning me in tiny little spots all over my insides.

You shudder, tasting that nasty artificial fruit synthesized in some lab full of wannabe evil scientists, and you feel it make a thin layer on your stomach, and you can feel it seeping out, out into the furthest reaches of your body, you feel the pressure on your skin when it reaches it, and it starts to come out as sweat.

The druggies will tell you all kinds of awesome fabricated crap, but here's how it is, you slowly just turn into a robot, and get a weird headache and nauseous, but it's still the better option. Because now I'm a nauseous robot that can't f*****g think straight, and what a relief. What a relief that this headache tearing through my brain, because I couldn't have taken that any longer. If she even looks at some f*g with a buzzcut and a f*****g pastel bathing suit from the f*****g LaCoste, I rinse it out with the evil scientist juice, or the herb of the ages, or the potion of the great American poets.

Yeah I see your pictures come up on the newsfeed of your friends with the pastel f**s, and clever you, you're not in them. But you're holding the goddamn camera, and you're with them. And you know I know. 'Don't get in the picture, or he'll be pissed, yeah you're right, don't want do deal with that bitching.' Great time. Holy s**t! A beer? Red cups? Yeah, you guys are awesome.

“They told the guys we weren't really 17, the w****s.”

Oh no, not that. Anything but that. They can't know your real age, or it'll be impossible for you to be the perfect w***e and tell everyone, everyone but me, and earn yourself some imaginary respect and blog about it on your f*****g sepia toned Tumblrs. Well now I am a f*****g robot, and that does not compute, b***h. F**k.

This is the better option now, I can't deal with that s**t right now, I can't sleep. I get real nervous about the bottle though, if my parents ask about it, that is If I get too messed up to get rid of it strategically. Why not just dump her, I pretend you ask?

Because something took a bleached sheet of newsprint, maybe a few words printed on it before it got trashed on account on a fucked up 'a.' Something scratched at it with a piece of charcoal until it was mostly black, maybe smeared it accidentally with its fingers or its wrists, or its leather bracelet, and abandoned it.

And because some art student in the sky came by with only an eraser, and started, tearing the paper here and there in the process, to scratch away an impression of his dream, his trashy, sexy, colorful, tanning, silent, teasing, bright eyed, delicate mouthed, beautiful dream, and for once in his life did okay. You can make out the impression if you stare hard enough, barely, until the teasing of light and dark and shapes steal away any assurance you had in a fleeting moment of a definite image.

And the beauty comes in parallel pulses, or flashes, confusing, teasing, so close. You can almost wrap your brain around it, and it eludes you. Like trying to catch a bird with a bubble wand, or trying to take a picture of a camera flashing, so that even if you get it the bird is injured or can easily escape, or the picture comes out all bright and you can't see anything.

Once you walk down a familiar street and see that picture taped to something, maybe a trash can, maybe just rolling down the street, that's it, you're done. That's when you have to decide to give up everything you have to pursue the picture, or let it stare at you, forever, while you pretend to have better things to do. But that sheet of newsprint is it. You can't burn that thing. If you throw it away, it'll see you, because everything is transparent from its perspective. You will never get away. But you will never be able to have that picture, perfectly representable in your brain.

But you can get damn close. So close your heart and your brain and other less poetic organs will catch on fire, although still at room temperature, so that you take it all for granted. And you tell yourself to make sure to pay attention to the burning next time you get that close, but you never do. But maybe someday, because you're still too young to know. You will get dangerously close to understanding that sheet of newsprint, maybe even hold it, when you're old enough and the wonder is gone, leaving only dull comfort.

This is what I endure, and this is one of my attempted, short-lived attempts to simultaneously escape and attract the gaze of the impression that scratches my back or tousles my hair with a knife, promising never to cut, but at the same time, never to be perfect.