Stepping Out The Front Door

The beetle-black train of coffee grounds leads to the empty graveyard of a soaked filter like some long procession of Cadillacs on their way to mourn the life of a friend.
The ash-sifted scent of morning-after cigarette smoke slips and shatters through teeth like snips of glass from the light bulb you ate.

It is another morning.

And though you don't drink coffee or smoke cigarettes,

It is that kind of morning.

The cicada-pitched hum of blood rushing through an alcohol-dessicated lump of gray tissue whines like a two year-old who forgot what he wanted.
The melted-gum drop cling of re-breathed air sloughs down your body like slug slime thicker where it was than where it is.

It is a morning when why has no answer.

When hope has dried up like a late-night blood sucker in the final-seconds sunrise.

It is that kind of morning.

The tears have flowed backward, turned and run down the Death Valley of your throat
The cry has climbed craving to the back belfry of your mouth and chimes with a lunatic ache.

You are alive,

you don't know why,

or for how long,

but you are.

The bull-thickened skull dulls you thoughts as they plod through the monsoon-matted mucus of your will.
The serial-killer haze parts slowly, stalking the door, an assassin determined for another day to kill.

You look up

and

You smile

written by Jeff Couch October 6, 2000