La Chaine

3:30 AM and a full moon floods your room; you do not sleep. You stare at countless conversations about the hells that twist and turn across the land, but you are none the wiser and your dreams when they come are muddled.

October is kind and sunny. For a short moment, there are no chinks in your armor, no flaws in your narrative. The days are weightless. But you see the darkness approaching your house, feel the pull of of the maelstrom circling an all-too familiar drain, you know the way this story is headed even as it is just smog in your periphery. A dusty typewriter stands in the corner of your room. You long for dirt under your fingernails and the smell of burning ink in your nostrils, want to tear the skin from your flesh and bleed into prose, you know what home is and it isn't happy but it holds you.

You know you are only pretending that this will be easy. The insight is unwanted, but here we are. Allow yourself to caress the keyboard. Allow the relapse. But I beg you not to drown.