Feels Like Hell

For more reasons than I can even count, I should not write a single word today. I feel like trash from the booster shot which the chatty nurse injected into my left arm in the middle of my guardian angel wing tattoo. She asks about it so I tell her I got it when my mom died over a decade ago to which she responds cooingly. It’s weird when you lose a parent so young because you have to talk about it on and off at times you wish you didn’t.

But enough about that because a wave of nausea has just washed over me like a sick wet blanket. It is as though my whole body is run all the way down. My skin is hot all over and my face is exhausted even though it hasn’t done anything at all. I pour the coffee and my left arm is killing me. I walk up the stairs and everything is slow motion. My head is pounding.

My mind though, you see, is still skittering all around bugging me to punch words onto the screen even if they are useless. That’s the thing about writing, it simply wants what it wants. It has things to say whether you want to say them or not. Mercifully, I am not working in the office today. If that were the case I’d have to off somebody.

I open the window to the unseasonal warmth. The sky is gray and the wind is stiff but not frigid. Bird song fills my ears and for this I will only ever be able to smile because birds are innocent and they sing as they were born to do without concern or hesitation. I think about the year gone by. The people I’ve met who claimed to adore me at first until they left without a final word or proper goodbye. We are ghosts to each other. Apparitions, anonymous and invisible right before each other’s listless eyes.

My thoughts are a cloud which hangs over a vacant abandoned lot in a part of town nobody wants to visit any time soon. The little birds collect themselves into a massive huddle before taking flight all together and storming against the murderous dome of sky. For a brief second which spins in my brain like a top, I consider whether or not I may have the actual flu. But really that’s irrelevant because I’ve no where to go, a beautiful stack of books to be read, and the coffee tastes like the best I’ve ever had. It would feel like heaven if everything inside me didn’t feel like hell.