Then Again We Could Die

It’s been a day and as I curl into blankets to collect my notes and mind sketches into a single document, I see the black birds circling outside the window. In gigantic sprawling circles they swoop and descend upon the grass turning it from a sea of brownish green to a crawling wash of inky feathered movement. There is a woman who makes flowers out of sugar I came across today. She displays them online and the most disturbing aspect of the whole scene is how perfectly real these fake things look, decadent, cascading blooms you can practically reach out and feel their smoothness on your skin. Their petals look inconceivably supple and the colors are the most exquisite blushing roses, peaches, frothy powder blues. Where on earth do people come up with this stuff and how do they find the time to hone such a skill let alone the market to sell it to? I don’t know about you but I’ve never once been into a home or other establishment where was displayed a sugar flower not to mention a whole faux bunch of them. That I’m aware of, though now perhaps I’ll take to tasting them in the future just to be certain. Meanwhile, here I sit scrolling through her images transfixed. I am a writer who is terrible at spelling. What I create is a crime scene of red slashes before I polish and serve it up for human consumption. I once misspelled the word pieces five times consecutively. Also, the word consecutively appears to be a challenge as well since we are spilling useless information. I cannot imagine the sugar floralist ever makes a mistake although she must. Stomach growling for me to break my fast which started only accidentally because I forgot to bring lunch to the office again, I tie my hair in a mess atop my head and pull on a sweatshirt before starting the bath water running and shoving a spoonful of peanut butter into my mouth. There are days when you can’t get out of your own way enough to make any progress, mostly because progress is a concept you no longer concern yourself with if you can avoid it. You throw in the wash. You eat pretzel bites and cheese and drink wine and flick through whatever it is that unhinges your knotted shoulders from your earlobes and lets you forget for five minutes that the world is unglued, abused, and ablaze with a sickness you only hope and pray you washed off your hands before you grabbed that half eaten jar of nutty spread earlier. Undressing in haste, I sink into the bath letting the hot sting of the water rush my pale skin pink with just enough pain, just enough heat to dissolve into absolute pleasure. In my head the notes I took swirl into tornadic oblivion as I lift one leg and admire my toes with their mangled purple manicure chipped and neglected. Later, still warm and smelling of scented soap as I type, which I really shouldn’t for I’ve nothing to say, spellcheck bloodies its disgust all over the word tornadic. I smile and consider buying myself a cheap bouquet of actual flowers tomorrow. Just to watch the fuckers bloom, and wither, and die.