It's okay, I'm okay

Sparkling, spinning and staring like a fool, wristwatch beeping and collar of my new shirt tight and itchy. Then I’m falling and falling and, fuck, so this is what it feels like to die. Hurtling past a mountain, a lake and a sky with birds in it, the kind of birds in chalk figure drawings, childlike, sticklike. I see his face, the old man, my old man, and he’s shaking his head and saying something under his breath that I can only take to be a lecture, maybe, Joseph, there’s nothing worse in this world than a waste of talent. But I’m not sure because a dog barks and snarls, but happily, and I reach out a hand that isn’t there. And he sniffs it and turns over, rolls over, speaks, gives me paw. I feel light and drifting now, not dropping, not so far away. Sadness grips and my forehead is wet. Cold and wet. The new shirt has turned to char and dust stuffs up my nose. Not again, not another bad morning. It’s the only thing I can relate to, a dreaded hangover. But a vision, another image floats in my vantage, short and small and sweet smelling. Bespectacled, it’s a woman with a profile of purest citrus and she touches my cheek. It’s light, the touch, only jewels and shiny things hang from her neck and obscure my line of sight. Her angelic visage slowly morphing, shifting, face now something else. Something still beautiful but featureless. Only air and scent, and a smile may be growing on my face. But she laughs and says it’s okay, Joseph. It’s okay. And I sink deeper, deeper still. Hurting now, I can’t get back the smile. It’s gone, but there is something spongy beneath me and I feel it bounce and give and I’m on my way back up. But the giggling and snickering laugh is now a rubbing, chafing wooden scrape. It’s definitely karma. It’s payback. I was dishonest one too many… but the green smells of southern sunshine and grass and poison ivy and crickets, they return strong and strong I am. Flexing and pulsing and trying to regain facial contortion. If there was only a face. This is a tease, a sadistic tease. I’m scaling, and grappling something rotten, like an old piece of fruit, sugary and nasty and my hands find no purchase but I reach and reach and flail. Now it’s giving and I’m falling again. Damn it, this is maddening, and I know it’s my time. I hear the crying, the whimpering. It’s soft at first. Maybe it’s coming from around the corner in the kitchen, behind the slow buzz of the old refrigerator. And I’m drunk and ashamed. This is why. This is the answer. She really still hurts, just like me. It’s hurting us both, but I can’t gain ground and I can’t really do what I’m supposed to do. I know I can’t do it, yet I swing my fists. I can’t feel this darkness with her voice reverberating through nothing, through a window in my head. Just a lonely wail of sorrow. Nothing ever plays out other than death and regret. Here it goes, my body is now completely airborne and black. The suffocating emptiness curling around until heat controls. Controlling fire, controlling snorts, primal and unforgiving. What is the void saying? Is it love? Is it lost? Is it long? It’s something like that. It’s something that I spin over, tumbling blind, my ears twitching or my sweaty head shaking. Nothing more, just a pit, just a pit, a deep pit. Only money and a nice piece of equipment, digital, sleek and yelling at me with liquid display. I fall, and the bottom is nearing. It hits, shattering me, but I’m okay. I can stand. I stare into the void above, and the void below reverses itself so that I’m not sure which way I’m looking. But the cry is still there, a yawning, slow cry, and I feel raindrops. But they aren’t raindrops, of course. They are tears. They are tears. They are tears. I turn around in them, again and again. I know I can’t stop them, but I can let them fall on me before the end, and that, I know, is surely on its way. It’s only power over me lets me drink. So I cry, too. And I cry, too, and I smile.