I don’t like weed; it makes me paranoid.
Or I’m already paranoid and weed accentuates it.
Once I did smoke it. Ok more than once.
I sat on the couch afraid to move, staring at the TV.
Unable to unconvince myself Homer Simpson was thinking bad thoughts about me.

Better. Much better, to leave it be.
Alcohol on the other hand, well. I love.
The warm slow spread, like octopus ink,
or like the octopus’s suctiony arms themselves, in my chest, belly,
nether and hind parts.
The looseness in my face, it goes to my finger tips,
and the slight acrid stank above my nose below my eyes.
Amber liquid amber light amber feeling.
Hey, that’s better, right?
Yeah.

I saw a play — a musical — on a rainy Superbowl Sunday. The theater was half full.
It was about a girl who spoiler alert killed herself. Good grief. A kick in the stomach from this beautiful creature
who didn’t want to live anymore.
And the actors singing about it under the lights
with brave and ardent faces.
I didn’t want it to end.

After the play I walked past a bar.
“There are no TVs in here, just humans” proclaimed a sandwich board. I looked in.
Yeah there were humans in there,
hunkered down, dry, murmuring confidentially shoulder to shoulder.
I wanted to talk and be heard and to listen and to lose my only self in the selves around me.

And I almost went in.
But remembered the girl who chose death
and walked in the rain to the subway instead.