parched

By day I am vacant, an empty shell of human flesh suspended in some foggy ether.

A great grand overwhelming numbness of the senses, as if there were no processors to feed inputs to. No magical wires behind the eyes, no hippocampus, no brain or flesh at all. Just a hollow expanse behind a thin veil of skin. 

I urge to cry or to scream, to flare up in some grand fashion but am instead shrouded in some inexplicable complacency. Where has the life gone? What has become of that slow-boil mind I love?

But wait - open the mouth and pour in alcohol, let it trickle down to the toes, slowly but surely rise up through the cavities of the legs. Watch as the clumsily handled marionette of the self jerks upright. Listen as it laughs and exclaims and socializes. It is a compelling enough charade to make one believe they are truly and vibrantly alive. But one mustn't be fooled. The drunk self is a paradox. There is a trade-off to be made.

For the more alcohol eases one's own anxiety, dissolving that pesky barrier, the less and less control one has over their behavior. The more likely f*****g up is. The more likely it is to betray oneself. 

Drunkenness must be the great exhausting purge which leaves me empty by day, like a dried crusty sponge, washed up on the countertop, parched and dying for moisture. 

On and on the days go, pages flying cinematically from a desktop calender, the thought keeps pinging around in my head "today, maybe today I'll muster up a s**t to give."