Indulgenta

The hungry feed on the desperate. I twist the drainer and turn on the faucet. Hear the rush of pounding water. I hang up the phone. Tonight, I feel like Cleopatra. I walk back to the the circular wooden table in the living room. On it, there's a laptop, a basket filled with fake fruit, along with numerous books, pens, and key-cards. I pick one of the cards up, use it to play with the powder until I like the way it looks. I grab a cut-in pen cap from the floor, place a bit of the top of it in my nostril and snort a line. Glass and sawdust and dried up blood. It feels like five thousand crushed mirrors in the back of my throat. I walk back to the bathroom, and slide into the water toes first, ballerina style. I let my face warm, shoulders slide down, hair unravel, my makeup drip and dissolve; the filth and carmine quietly deliquate. I keep one arm dry to light up a cigarette, lazily watch the smoke and steam rise. Inhale, exhale. White noise. I close my eyes. I see melting stars, barbwire veins, heavy metal lavender clouds. I wish I could fall asleep. Hypnagogia comes close enough: pacifying lullabies, excerpts of esoteric conversations, evanescent whispers. The white noise soothes me. I throw a bath bomb into the bottom of the bath where it is already hot, it staying on the ground but bringing its explosions to the top. A new magenta pink ocean. I wipe my face with a towel, leaving a not-so-mysterious set of stains consisting of two black spots and what looks like a rose-colored kiss some length below. Something like a party favor, I guess. I cover my body with a scrub of miniature crushed pearls, the ceiling the color of a smeared orange sunset. My eyes go blank in darkness and sleep, canopied under lashes. “I fell away from thee, O my God, and in my youth I wandered too far from thee, my true support. And I became to myself a wasteland. - Saint Augustine, Confessions” November 25th, 2010