Have I lost it, as opposed to finding it. I find myself every day. Suddenly there, always there, a knowing and unknowing, a curling and staggered breath. it’s not supposed to amount to anything, just get it down. There’s so much garbage here. So much refuse. Words you barely know how to use but use them anyway because they sound cool. Make you sound cool. Like a coolatta. What the fuck is wrong with you? “coolatta” but hack at it. that’s the point, to drudge through the misery, get it out, dig around, hope you don’t get poked by a stray needle.

I was never ever really worried about random metal cuts. I was never worried about my hand in the heap and the pin prick of something rusty and jagged and filthy. Always thought myself invincible. Running down alleyways playing poor man’s football without equipment, too much traffic on the side streets to play a scrimmage properly, and there I was: husky kid barreling down the alleyway close to the wall, too close, gaining an ungodly momentum on the return and my hand holding the ball scraped against brick and mortar. And I feel the gentle tug of romance in that thought, in that memory of bleeding as I scored a touchdown, outpacing the boys that I wanted to be accepted by, the friends I never truly had. But that’s another story for another time if I ever get all the bits and bytes in the right order.

And it’s the order of things that bother me. How they get lost, or mis-shaped. You never really remember the thing itself: the thing itself is long gone. Even worse, the thing itself was never there. You were never there. Just the impression of a world you thought you were in but left little evidence on you and you on it.