Mythology fills in the cracks in the drywall of science.

I remember conversations such as these-- stoned, caffeinated, grateful. I am left eavesdropping on a dialogue I've had before... that which isn't mine to hear, and I bounty hunt my bygone eloquence.

I brought the winter with me in a technicolor stash box when I ran away from home to erase the slates. I closed my legs to the population, their Dutch-induced accents, infectious prophylactics and undesired highs, but sometimes I still wake up wondering who was in my mouth last night, and I can taste the whiskey and the salty latex slide, the indicative friction, the tousled hair and olfactory field trips on lusty school buses. Then I remember.

The philosophers disintegrate, and I'm left recreating New York City in the heartland where the storms roll hourly in. I still avoid the prepositional phrases of Times Square and the insubordinate clauses of falafel men, craving drunken jabberwocky, stale and awake at 3 am. I tattoo the Village across my eyelids as it slips and drips down misplaced inner thighs quivering on unfamiliar bathroom floors... liplick for a trace of the juices of lush apartments and donated smoke. Body image shatters like a mirror plunging from the Windows on the World. I sparkle as it bounces from scaffolding to windowsill to glittering nighttime sidewalks, crunching beneath boots and big-ticket stilettos, unnoticed like the rumble of the trains.

I laugh at a different ignorance over the 10 am Sunday morning walks of shame past the Shake 'n Bake families. They hide their daughters' eyes from the leather and lace awaiting, plaster casting the future's perfect wives. The science of this sobriety sends ink-smudged chills up my spine.

I light another cigarette. It's a southern Monday, and I am writing the new mythology.

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