I close my eyes and sometimes see light. I’m focusing on the crack in my windshield. I promise I’ll never fix it. I hope it shatters like a bottle of my favorite whiskey. Waste the whole thing because I probably shouldn’t drink it anyways. You wonder why I’m sad and I tell you the truth. I swear I tell the truth. I’m sober for sad words and I feel them soak through me until I’m drunk off joy. And when I calm down I’ll tell you why I’m tired and you’ll tell me to rest while the rest of the world screams for me to wake up. Drive miles until I reach home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Defined as a place of permanence, except I’m all over the fucking town like the flames that raged through the city when the people neglected it for too long. I’m stuck in an urn and I’m tired of feeling like I need to earn the right to move on. Pull me back like sin as I try to break through with mercy. Maybe I never will. Walk with me until we feel like ghosts- like no one knows you’re there. I dare you to try. It’ll keep you here like guilt and watch you fester in fear of fearing the things you can’t explain why you fear. But you do and it’s real and it’s honest and it’s indignant. “Be still in this”, I say to myself with trembling hands and trembling words and a trembling heart that beats too fast for gravity to keep up with. It’s like opening my eyes and still seeing darkness. -AMT