Chaos. The Quiet Kind. (Entry for December, Week 2 of brigits_flame)
I drink coffee with vanilla creamer and pretend it’s a luxury I couldn’t live without. I pretend it’s a drug. Laced with alcohol. LSD. Ecstasy. All the things I wish it could be.
But who am I kidding?
I drink coffee that tastes strangely like my city’s tapwater, laced with Lysol and smoke and something else I don’t know. I stare out the window at a parking lot; I count red cars, rusting vans. Count the times the ambulance leaves the clinic, wait for its return.
I start to cry.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, I say, not because it’s what I feel, but because it’s the worst word I know, and the only one that comes to mind on mornings like these.
Fuck. I feel the coffee and stomach acid tease the back of my throat. What am I doing?
What do I want?
And where are my damned car keys?
I can’t answer any of these. Instead I stand at the edge of the sink, my fingers wound around a coffee mug with grinds on the rim, the taste on my lips, and I am overwhelmed. So, so overwhelmed.
I glance out the window and watch the ambulance return, nestling into the clinic’s makeshift garage, watching me through crude wooden planks, waiting for the next injury, housecall… the next tragedy.
Waiting.
But who am I kidding?
I drink coffee that tastes strangely like my city’s tapwater, laced with Lysol and smoke and something else I don’t know. I stare out the window at a parking lot; I count red cars, rusting vans. Count the times the ambulance leaves the clinic, wait for its return.
I start to cry.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, I say, not because it’s what I feel, but because it’s the worst word I know, and the only one that comes to mind on mornings like these.
Fuck. I feel the coffee and stomach acid tease the back of my throat. What am I doing?
What do I want?
And where are my damned car keys?
I can’t answer any of these. Instead I stand at the edge of the sink, my fingers wound around a coffee mug with grinds on the rim, the taste on my lips, and I am overwhelmed. So, so overwhelmed.
I glance out the window and watch the ambulance return, nestling into the clinic’s makeshift garage, watching me through crude wooden planks, waiting for the next injury, housecall… the next tragedy.
Waiting.