lying down, looking up...

"funny how alcoholism
is always less appealing in the
smalltown bars," she thought, as she
pulled from the parking lot
and away, down the road.

she left him,
seated at the bar, doing things she couldn't
quite understand.
beside her
the rest of the world
sped by, growing less and less
visible through the
car windows which were
fogged by her breath.







less than perfect? oh, it was quite less than perfect. an old bar, ceilings stained with smoke from a fire that had almost taken the whole place down a decade before. the blaze which left behind a steep brown smear, thicker than soot and firm, caked upon a ceiling full of business cards and things, tacked and taped. hunting licenses, faux money. she wrote notes on the back of cardboard coasters, again and again, until she got it right:

"i will be more famous than you..."

the whole of it was little more than a swirl of sad country, dingy bathrooms, lonesome men in plaid caps handling dull vodka tonics. much more than she could swallow: fingernails chewed to the quick. hollowed out eyes directed downward, into the grain of the wood.