You light a cigarette to ease the shaking in your hands. Chug that bottle to get the taste of him out of your mouth. The air bites your skin, but the whiskey warms your throat. You pace your thoughts into the sidewalk. Stack them into a messy pile until they all become squiggly lines. Until you can't understand what you're thinking about. Until his eyes don't attach to every strangers face you pass in this town. But his face is splattered onto the city walls along with thorned roses and gang signs. You would scrub it off with broken nails and bleeding knuckles if you could walk straight without stumbling into a pair of tin cans or another beating heart. You try to throw the bottle of whiskey at him instead but you miss your target by a lot and now the bottle soars shatters onto the ground in a thousand depressing pieces. You thought drinking could help you forget his name but all you forgot was yours and which street your parents lived on. Derek. Derek. Derek. His name is branded onto your brain in big bold letters. You take a swig of rum in hopes that it'll wash away from this reality and into another. But then you remember the depressing pieces of broken glass in the middle of the road. You see yourself somewhere in that scattered image of glass and wasted alcohol. Dismantled bone by bone. You hate him. And it's not like a you-broke-my-heart kind of hate, but I-gave-you-every-fucking-piece-of-me-you-piece-of-shit-the-pieces-may-have-been-broken-and-jagged-but-I-trusted-you-to-hold-them-without-breaking-them-even-more-or-prick-your-fingers-on-my-sharp-edges-and-stain-my-skin-with-your-blood-now-I-have-to-wipe-it-off-clean-this-mess-that-YOU-made-I-have-to-close-this-fucking-hole-in-my-chest-that-you-left-WIDE-OPEN-for-the-next-boy-that-walks-through-my-life-like-a-tourist-in-new-york-and-God-save-the-boy-who-sees-beauty-in-this-broken-because-he-will-have-to-work-SO-HARD-for-the-trust-that-you-broke-and-its-all-your-fucking-fault! Kind of hate. You turn away from the mess on the ground to find a way to move the hell on. Because life's too short to drink crappy alcohol and cry over boys who don't care. You start by one foot after the other. Then you see how the streetlights flicker like yellow roman candles, and how they always turn on at six at night no matter what problem there is in the world. You allow this fact to be your compass, to wipe your eyes, and to tie your shoelaces. The streetlights stumble you home after crushing that cigarette under your shoe.
