MONKEYBICYCLE

". . . but this is a wake in the sky and it requires a glass of whiskey, miss."

In the evenings, in a bed on the floor I shared with my brother, nightmares of the bottles and shoes in the muck at the bottom of the lake, those lost children. I dreamed of floating off on the calm water, then slipping down beneath its surface, the bottom slime in my hair, my fingers turning blue.

This morning I murder your mother, but then I always murder your mother.

I press play. Rob Base owns my four-inch speakers: Dunk. Duh Duh Duh. I start the grind, the slow build up to tasteful finale of crotch feints and double bicep isolations. It takes two.

. . . the process became active and physical—almost as bodily as it was mental.

. . . I’m from the East Coast so I said you’re selfish, and you’re from the West Coast and said sometimes in love you need to be selfish . . .

I arrive at a blank sheet of paper as an exile lands on a new planet. Alien, I have to prove myself all over again. I have to learn all the new gods—and how to please them. I can’t turn back.