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March 25, 2005, 11:52 p.m.
Thighs pressed to fetid kindergarten carpet... black mold dripping down walls, smothering sleep... surrounded by the detritus that has become my life... distant chords and faint strains tickling my ears, triggering ancient memories and then slipping away like smoke streams from the corners of cracked lips.
This is what you've become, kid... Mounds of shit in your bedroom floor. This is what you've been reduced to.
Which memories can you part with? Which lighter, which pen, which love letter can you toss? Ticket stubs and shoe strings and that blue motorola pager you bought in '96. Glass straws and hemp necklaces and that pipe you fell in love with in 2002. The first lines of 16 memoirs, around the world 53 times in marlboro miles, and 4 tubes of cherry chapstick. My life creates its own shape in the form of coke tabs and concert stubs and incense burned six weeks prior.
When did memories become so based in material? If I throw away the pictures, will I forget her? If I throw away her poetry, will she be gone for good? Will he be erased if I finally toss his baseball cap, the one with the stitching ripped and the bill frayed?
So, for now, I'm packing up her shoes, his guitar, the impressions of her teeth shaped from plaster... Packing up these memories and moving... on... I suppose. For today.
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