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A rare public appearance, the noise, the game, food sticky with slicked cheese, the band played on, tinnitus screaming, Mexican lager tumbled down my throat, oozed down my arm, a man repeatedly shrieked in my ear, “As your lawyer, I advise you to …”
Should I have listened to counsel? No matter. Night banged its gavel. Morning pulled me away like a bailiff, brought no regrets, left me in a sludge of dehydrated waste. It took hours to wade through.
Anxiety. And me.
Housemates in my head.
He showed up uninvited,
never met him before.
He doesn’t talk, he screeches.
He doesn’t eat, he retches.
He doesn’t help, he leeches.
He doesn’t shine, he etches.
I called the cops.
He came back.
I changed the locks.
He slipped in the window.
I’ll kill him with kindness.
Told him everything was fine.
He spat in my coffee.
I revealed my secrets.
He shot a video and shared it.
Anxiety is an asshole.
I painted a line down the middle of my head.
Gave him the good half
with the large window.
Paid all the bills.
He won’t stay on his side.
Steals my stuff,
eats my food.
makes noise when I’m trying to sleep.
(This most often of all.)
I’ll kill him by any means.
Drowned myself in booze.
He sang like Dean Martin.
Took meds.
He invited friends to get high off them.
I put a bear trap in the tub.
He stopped bathing.
I put poison in my leftovers.
He asked for seconds.
My head is an unlivable space.
And even if he moves out,
I cannot.
© 2024 Christopher M. Morlock
Lightly, Gemma set herself back on the ground to stand just behind the beast. It still posed on its knees, facing the pyre, ramrod but trembling, orgasmic. Even on its knees, the back of its head was still nearly a foot above her eyeline. Even facing away from her, the revolting stench of its breath bellowed up and around its massive hairy head. It had no power to revolt Gemma’s gummed-up nostrils. The tinkling skull drums and hissing bones on the pyre had no power to irk Gemma’s punctured eardrums. The steaming blood on its fur and massive outstretched paws, each larger than her torso, had no power to shrink Gemma’s sealed eyes.
It is a man, the Virgin Mary cautioned her.
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With Halloween a young boy was engrossed,
though his family had less dough than most.
With scissors he neatly
cut holes in a sheet
then paraded around as a ghost.
His sister had hair like ripe citrus,
and wanted to dress like a princess.
The precocious youth
had a waggling tooth
Like a marshmallow bobbing in Swiss Miss.
Water ran down the brick wall behind me. Filtering through the rust and mold, it reached me as a gross, slurpy fluid. It tasted terrible. And what a chore it was getting that water into my mouth without brushing my teeth against the bricks. Of all the dreadful sensations here, that was the worst.
Read moreA poem.
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