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LTOL Pt.2
Dear Palindrome,

You’re the rebel that almost killed me.
Maybe that’s why I admire you the way I do. You tipped a scale I could not balance alone. You cut me off, to cut yourself off. I didn’t crash like you. The seasons were kind to me. Palindrome, I should have died so many times…
In a way… I guess I did.

Do you remember Krystal? She died the winter after you left. Losing the two of you is no justification for what I did next. Still, context is important.
The endless sense of loss was unescapable. I cried down both arms, all the way to my wrists. I wore a lot of long sleeve shirts that year. The bruises were a manifest of my heart.

You know our radio show collapsed. The town mayor got tired of my mad conspiracy rants. He demanded I ‘never broadcast in his town again!’
I was fired from my job for letting that ratbag kid next door drive the work car around a dirt paddock. Fuck knows how I got caught. Small town, I guess. Once they paint you black. That’s it.

The rumors didn’t help. Either way, I’d given up trying.

I did try to keep connected to all that we established. But without you, my momentum imploded. Every side glance stare reminded me of the you shaped shadow that followed me through the streets.
Being numb helped, until the drugs and booze took their toll too.

Palindrome. It’s not just the color of the blood that screams, ‘You hit an artery.’ There’s the roaring pain that accompanies such stupidity.
Was it self-inflicted, slow secluded suicide? Or just another way to bear an unbearable reality? We all seek reprieve from the noise of existence. Maybe I was strung up, weighed down and drowning in you. I got dirt under my fingernails mining veins like some fool chasing gold.

But I made friends. I took in a homeless kid and had crackheads make me chicken soup. They’re good people with a kindness for skin and bone.
The winter cold gave me pins and needles and desire to not feel overcame all desire to live. I studied chemistry and grew my own poppies. I learned to convert, extract, and administer too many dangerous things.

I filled my head and my heart with anything that would help push out the memory of you.

Xoxo Alex Brownsmoke To be continued…