The Warmest Place on Earth

And I had always felt that in those moments his beer stained breath would be enough. Whirring dizziness would spin me a tale of triumph and affection. And in the Amber lamp post lighting we could walk hand in hand and I could ignore my icy grasp. If I could catch faint glimpses of his halo sitting at just the right angle on his kingly head, I believed together our drunken stumble would have us coming across rolls and rolls of unfinished film. Its waxy reassuring emptiness playing for movie goers everywhere. The vodka and red bull mixed just right tonight, in higher dosages than one would recommend, bode well with my heavy eyes closing just so and sticking with dry mascara. I could see his fuzzy image as perfect. His warm and biting breath whispered assuredly “quiet now, and let us dance, hand in hand in the comfort of my lonely bed, and warmth of naked cover” he fancies himself a poet, a proprietor of words, selling goods to a world of young hearts. But they fall like hail on my pounding eardrums, and I speed through the steps avoiding the formalities and formulations. Furiously descending to the warmest place on earth, shivering with cold as calloused hands handle my unwelcoming shoulders. I unbutton every part of him, and walk away deed undone. I’ll sleep alone tonight. I will walk home alone tonight, a little warmer for my own company. Hoping to meet a lowly beggar man who dances wild I the night, he alone could ease this worried walk. I have lost all bounce in my step but I’ll walk for miles and I won’t sleep for days. Play track 7 repeat. As Halloween horror clouds whip past in the silent night and sickly looking branches sway about me roaring with a million tiny voices, I’m careful to swim in pools of light. My breathing fills me with the screaming of the trees and my moccasin feet pitter pat on a tired cement surface, flat with footsteps of a million tiny feet. All the while in my head I run through my ritual of fear, as each wind chime becomes a sign of certain death. I walk through in unfocused reverie this evening in a world spinning much to fast. At last. At last my quiet street sits before me in perfect symmetry, streamlined and square. Each little castle guarded by fierce hedges with sharp edges of care and too much time. This stillness can’t help but hit me too suddenly for its grandiose appearance is unaware of my damaging presence. My body never stills in this spinning expanse. As the world rages and tears about me I’m swayed by the still and drink. The view from my front landing, if I close my eyes just so, and mix my drinks just right, conjures dreams of something more. He was perfectly symmetrical, but without the smoothness of this place. He was a stiff drink which stung and bubbled as we moved hard and fast. He created my lonely ascent tonight and made it easy to do. My cloudy white covers slide over my bare heaving breathes, ragged and shivering I am made small by a world of magnanimous size. My room spins just fast enough to create a whirlwind dream, my covers crinkle in my grip had they always been this soft and feather light? I grasp at flower petals, fragrant like summer days the ones I had let myself alone, unaware that I’d ached.
Sharon