Better Now

You can feel the Cheerios in your belly - you can feel each one individually, less like food now and more like 55 separate promises. You catch yourself addressing the hungry urge, which you assumed to be carnal, but it's more than that, really. Halted, pensive, you consider your cigarette for a moment before dismissing the notion. It too is burned up like a series of paintings stolen during the war. After sitting with the idea for a while, you can feel its spores all over you, like being covered in hair after petting a cat. 

That's why you hold your breath when we drive past the house where we grew up. So you don't inhale the spirits of those days. So you don't catch that too. Although these words stretch endlessly in the other direction, you know it's better now.

It's better now.

But you didn't write anything down; you didn't even get a picture on your iphone. You know by the time it's penned, it'll feel like a copy of a copy of a copy, xeroxed into a smother of stray black lines and fuzzy copier static. Sure, you drive too fast, but having a lead foot also means you stop short.