I knew it was coming. I knew it wouldn't be slow or even at least steady, it was to be and would be no doubt an avalanche. Like last time. I knew this. So I took an even amount of steps away, trying to prepare. Things began to fall into place for me. It had taken some time, granted, but now things were moving swiftly in my direction. All of them except this. Work took my mind off the weekends and the weekends took my mind off work but now I dreaded those two single days. Friday evenings, always a disappointment. In a club that is too crowded and full of people I only half know and already dislike. Alcohol making it's way down deep, burrowing and nestling, causing the far too casual sway of my hips. Intelligence wasted, thoughts incorrigible, everything inaudible. Weekends.

It's enough to try. Hair curled, a ridiculous amount of make up to hide terrible skin, too high heels, all of it. None of it makes sense to me anymore.
I don't understand the point of it. I don't understand the point of trying anymore to play this game. Why insist?
None of the men I meet ever warrant it.

I am looking in the wrong places and meeting the wrong people. People who don't care about me. People who couldn't ever care about me. So much time lost in the wrong bed.





It is still cold. February winds shake the dirt loose so that a haze hangs over the interstate. I drive in the mornings to work when it is still dark and again when the sun has begun to set. It's this time, in the evening, when the sky is navy and littered with traffic light that I think of myself in New York and how badly I yearned to see this sky, where there, sudden black, street lamps switched on announcing the end of day.