sweet, dear

         Every god damn fiber of my being wants a drink. I want that sweet, dear poison streaming, sinking through my veins and bones and to stay coated on my tongue so every time I swallow I can taste those sweet, dear bitter chemicals. At least I'd be in control of that death. I smoke more because it makes me feel French and exquisite and I've always loved it and I suppose it seems less toxic than being a boozer.  Now, I am caught between acceptable, nay, welcomed, hilarious daily inebriation and the part where I became a college grad and an adult in society and was supposed to inherit all of life's secrets when I accepted the hat and robe and diploma. But I didn't actually attend my graduation...

         I see a young me in a Millennium Falcon t-shirt sitting across from me on the uptown 6. Her head is dropped in her lap, eyes in her palms, hiding torn nail beds, bleeding and swollen from her gnawing, braces-less teenage teeth. When she looks up to scan for signs of life, I see the tired look in her only a few tortured teens know.

        Bellinis, mimosas, sangria, ooh! And all their fruity carbonated concoctions of the like! Ooh thank you yuppies for inventing drinks to welcome us boozers into sophisticated society as ageless and hilarious, again; and now with toast and eggs and the morning sun. See, so, sometimes yuppies are right... and well, yuppies are right even when they're wrong because when enough yuppies start yapping the same nonsense, the same nonsense comes true, becomes invented, whatever needs to happen does... because what yuppies want is good for business; because, what yuppies want, yuppies get; because their fat fat wallets and wide wide boredom always need more room for their gluttonous bellies and the leather that feeds them.

         This girl, this younger me, she leafs and hopes until defeat strikes and she drops her head again, lower and lower still, like she's already figured out the world and there's nothing more to watch today because she's seen it all before and, sadly, none of it is all too new. She gleams, prays even, for variations, for initiation, but really it's all the same and she's bored and tired, not so much from sleep deprivation, as from the bull that is the shit that rounds the world. Most are fortunate to ride the blindness of the truth that ignorance is bliss; but this girl, this sweet young young dear girl, can't help but see the spigot we rely on to revolve. 

         I cannot tear my eyes from her, because she seems even more heartbroken than I, and I hope she doesn't turn to booze and smoke to deal when gravity crumbles and we fall out of space because (half of) our darling country couldn't wrap their heads around anything beyond denying this sweet warming.