Lately I've been thinking

When the water pressure goes lazy,
and my mirror reflects nothing but clouds of dirty fog,
then I'll know it's too late.

I'm too late.

I will soon be gone with nothing to look back upon but a muddy path I made with angry rubber boots.
They were lined with fur.
My still feet were still cold.
My still hands still bare and numb.

Yet something keeps me trudging on.
It's not hope.
It's not love. That one's for certain.
But it's definitely something just honest, just real enough to liven my crumbling bones.

And I breathe through my own cancerous lips,
all dry skin and exposed pink flesh.
Wetting them seems traitorous.
I am parched.

The last spirit-like trails of evaporating humanity rising from my form toward the heavens I will never call home.
Because I am sick.
My illness is of my own preparation.

Lately I've been thinking:
If I am sick then something must be intoxicating me.
But what agent might this be?

I think of Jewelia and menthol cigarettes,
credit card debts and six packs of flavored malt drinks.
The blood of lost virginity.
The blood.
So much blood.

Too much for my lazy shower to cleanse.
I cannot abandon the effort
as I have been abandoned (say what you will).

But still I grow afraid that the water in my shower will turn into lazer beams and burn through me when I am at my weakest, my most vulnerable.

Now I remember that it already has.