Words on the page.  The blank page.  Right.

    I wake at seven to do this.  So I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my day.  So when I spend the next fifteen hours doing nothing but toss my body about my bedroom I can look back and think ‘at least I wrote.’

    At least I wrote.

    Right.

    So I meet with previous co-workers yesterday.  With friends.  I dress up in clothes I don’t normally wear and I have anxiety about how awkward I look.  I rush to my housemate’s room and spin around.  I ask if I look a fool.  She assures me otherwise, but I don’t believe her.  I charge back to my room and demolish my closet.  Eventually I settle on a familiar sweater and jeans and feel calm enough.  Though when I step outside I realize I chose wrong.  It’s much too hot.  I sweat immediately.  But I keep it on.  It’s my outfit after all.

    My friend arrives and I jump into her car.  She drives us into Baltimore.  To Sticky Rice.  I’ve never been.  We sit at a table outside, along the sidewalk, and soon enough the third joins and we’re all speaking of work, and relationships, and antidepressants, and the time moves and moves and it’s pleasant enough.

    A couple stands to smoke cigarettes and though they seemingly try to distance themselves, the wind blows in our direction and I want one.  But I don’t tell this to anyone.  I hold it in.

    When dinner is over we part with the third and hop back in the car to speak of school and jobs and life.  I feel inadequate.  So inadequate.

    What am I doing?  

    I’m writing.  And it is proving absolutely nothing.

    She stops in front of my house and we say how we’ll do it again.  Next week perhaps.  

    Then I’m alone.  I run to my room and strip bare.  Wearing nothing but my skin.  

And I still feel awkward.