The Champagne Soapbox

Sure, I have time. I always have time for you. Sure, whatever you need. Whatever you need. 

What do you need? Should I pack extra in case you don’t bring what you need? It’s hard for me to grasp I’m all you need. My smile you found between carnivorous testosterone and chemical weed. The inside of my gnawed lips slide against rugged teeth, the ones marked between not eating clean and biting nails. When my smile feels weak. What parts of my mind can you only see?

I can be what you need. Sure, I become someone better for you to perceive. Not that you need it, that’s not what I mean. Give you a chance to rediscover between the necessary medicinal estrogen and books I ordered but never read. Patti Smith on my Night Stand with a rusting earmark between written crises and chicken-scratch on Ch. 13. I told you I wanted to disappear when I didn’t feel seen.

Your smile fits into my neck, like, so many liquids filling cracks between ice and mixed hormones and screaming men at the ringing bar scene. I’m shorter than everyone else. How I absorb energy. How tall I grow to reach above beaten ego and pseudo-personality. How I felt, and become someone else. He always sees.

Remind me of how to be. Sure, whatever I need. Let’s melt into REM pheromones and recite scenes my premature dreams begged me to complete. We start a movie and fall asleep.

I look at clouds from both sides now. Up and down, cloudy visions I that vaguely recall. It hasn’t rained much at all this fall. The more I think, I don’t really know clouds at all. 

Junebugs and mosquitoes and flies my cat chase. The dizzy dancing way that we feel when dreams become real. First time seeing snow as if it were on a beach. It disappears like an empty plate after a big meal. I forgot how skinny felt.

Happy tears but looking around slows them down. I smile and frown, seconds between the same emotion, a different clown. I turned 25 wearing a princess crown. An easy rhyme to find what was never around, when I was little, when I was 13. Sneaking words and stuffing them between the mattress and sheets. I wrote to her while meeting the future, acting like the future was mine to predict when I still sat with crossed feet. I still do.

Now friends are acting strange. They shake their head and mention that I changed. Look around and believe everything isn’t the same. Clouds in the way, releasing the rare rain. I’m always in the way, releasing words that all mean the same. Just like now, you reading this. Sure, whatever I need to make my thoughts feel less than insane. Felt the rain split my skin and they wonder how my brain translates simple pleasure with grain. 

It’s just a day, and the next. 

I won’t always feel the best. 

Be your best. My best.

2AM, learning how to invest. 

Use the airport to leave and come home. 

Live by the airport, watch the people leave and make it home.

Hope that the pilot gets some rest.