other impulses

here's why i can't sleep, you said, and put your hands down on the table, with the palms facing up. and with your hands like that, empty, and the white, soft side like wilting flowers, i want to bite down of the translucent flesh of your wrists. this, and other impulses i am not proud of follow me when i leave. impulse: to turn back. to tear things off the wall and fling them into the busy afternoon street below, or at you. to try to explain myself. to board a plane anywhere. to enter the next store i pass and steal as much as i can carry. drink something strong.
here's why i don't do anything anymore, i say to myself. and keep walking towards my cluttered apartment as though there were nowhere else to go, as though i were a homing pigeon, as though there is something waiting for me there. the walls greet me greyly. home early? they want to know. i'm not explaining to anyone today. reheat yesterday's meal and chew mechanically. here comes the airplane, open the hangar, i think, and leave the fork suspended at the entrance to my gullet for long enough to mull over the investment it takes to create a short story for every bite. i'm too selfish for children, my mother's voice says in my head. i lay my hands, palms up, on either side of the empty bowl. i look like i'm about to pray. ridiculous. my forced laughter is dull and preposterous in the empty kitchen, slowly growing dark.
water gets all over the counter when i do the dishes and drips onto the floor dully. it's getting darker all the time. i turn up my music so i don't hear the dripping. a little louder to drown out the night. i boil water for tea. i pick things up and put them back down again.
i'm not even thinking about you anymore, i don't think. when you spend too much time insisting you don't want something, its a hard hit to realize you damn well did. maybe you never even put your hands on the table. maybe you weren't even talking to me. i've been dragging my fingers along the contours of this story for years and here i sit, dazed and dumb and dry-mouthed realizing i don't read braille.
there's nothing else to do with today. sleep comes easy. dream of david bowie quoting neitzsche and lesbian threesomes with violin playing chinese women:
'the one goeth to his neigbor because he seeketh himself, and the other because he would fain lose himself. your bad love to yourselves maketh solitude a prison to you...this spoke zarathustra'
wake in sweats.

tremor hands at the flower stand, only the bouquets come out right. one of those days i guess. when you bring me coffee, all i can think about is my thick fingers misreading and the swing set of my youth, the opossum under the porch, roddy the neighbor boy whose face i can't remember. nothing that has to do with anything. old escapes feel like new cages and the ticket in my pocket is only taking me someplace i've been before. maybe i feel most at home on the night bus, maybe i feel most at home on a crowded street by myself, maybe i feel best when the seat next to me is empty.

i still don't believe in objective truth,maybe that's why i'm a pushover