Nights when I can hardly bear to exist, and then realize it's two a.m. and if I could only make it to bed I could wake up different. Nights when I can't possibly get drunk enough. Nights when the only possible motion is to make art for strangers.

It's only tonight that I've embodied my pain with gratitude, with a slick, hot hunger for staying alive. By embody I mean en-body, be the body in which the pain resides, tongue it like a child's tooth: a grating, metal-tinged intruder, myself shifting against myself.

I fear and crave the immediacy of people. I can't take it but it twists me up to want it so bad. I don't mind being alone so long as I never talk to anyone, but once the poison gets in it's in.