Lucas Simone

Coming Back

The weather is perfect, which means: fat rain and a sky like cigarette ice cream. (When I write this down I spell cigarette with too many consonants—ciggarrette.) The pho broth is brown and hot and the peach is bright orange and drips pale orange puddles into the takeout bag on my lap. The song in the restaurant when I waited for my order was hard—one of the ones she used to play in the shower while I plugged my ears in the basement. But I’m getting better at filling the marrow in my bones, which means: coming back to the present moment. I am not in the basement. Right now my hotel comforter looks like that thanksgiving dish with the marshmallows on top—baked but still bright white—and my pen ink turns from black to gray because I’m writing on my back with my notebook above me, and when I smile in the bathroom mirror my face breaks open like I’m splitting a tube of Pillsbury dough. Which means: I am not in the basement. I’m here.

Patrick at the Fremont Psych Hospital Sucks Big Fat Dicks

myself, my face 
in your bare blue mattress 
you slapping more on my back 

mattress after mattress 

like slices of american cheese