pump it up

flutter. flutter. fuck.

it's morning.

noon, afternoon, night. it doesn't matter what time.

in a steampunk-inspired crank of your lid, your day begins. you're already exhausted from the sweaty, steaming effort to open your eyes, soon decimated by a peek at the darkened road ahead, settled black with coal dust. you rub your eyes with blackened fingers and swipe the dripping strands off your neck.

and sigh.

blink. blink. fuck.

how do they do it?

how do they swing their legs over and plant not one, but both feet on the floor?

this wormless woman flares with black lung. your cough, raspy; rough, erupts. you can't breathe. your chest slams shut, faster than Her bulkhead doors. icy waters spill over and over and over, flooding your heart's chamber, sinking you faster than the Unsinkable.

your limbs, limp from pumping all night.

["women and children first!"]

your body is anchored flat, every bend of every limb, voodooed by sacks of sadness. you are deep sea drowning in a fluffy, frothy ocean of blankets and bedding. sacks like the crushed velvet, golden-roped sheath cocooning your parents Crown Royal, keeping it safe until hard, angry sips could soften any given day; giving you monarched-winged flight from fear.

if you could just move this leaden limb.

[get the lead out, bitch.]

you try. but, you're so tired. you write all night long. insomniac scribblings scratch against your skull like the panicked nails of a small rodent, trapped; hungry, deep within your cabin walls. you think you're empty, but like an electronic pencil, keep injecting yourself with more. and then, hijacking the Marquis de Sade's focused insanity, you enlist rubbery maggots, to worm their voices along the tunnels of your brain.

you are spent.

bankrupt.

you lie in a dreamlike fog, staring.

in what world does this conversation exist?

"thank you for not taking my pills. i appreciate it..."

"what? you're thanking me for not stealing your drugs...?"

in what world is one's spouse's chronically soiled health swapped for the other?

in the same sober house that bears a safe full of pills.

the sacks weigh heavy, like the burden of cold, hard cash. you can't shake the shivering silver off with any slick, choreographed move, nor with with the post-bath pirouette your hound twirls her waterlogged coat into dry. for the stack of i.o.u's stuffed under your mattress would fall fluttering down like a ticker tape parade, choking you on confetti,

pelting you with pennies from heaven.

as the strains of the depression-era ballad fade away, you make like an old victrola and crank up to seated. and listen. and the sound of a bespectacled, 80's folk-rocker's smash gets not one, but both feet on the floor.

["pump it up until you can feel it..."]