good grief no.

one of those times,

where you call into question your favorite band. is it still allowed, for them to be your favorite band, can you trace it to your roots, can you survive in a vacuum. are you buying that 45 because it's a great song or because it's an opinion. it's the time to divide things up but i can't do the math because the lines are blurred and that division symbol looks like a plus sign. or maybe a multiplier. and everything is amplified. the wind in my ears and the uneven jostle of the road for a full block, a sick feeling already in my stomach only enhanced. oh god i think i'll vomit right here on ravenswood, exactly a mile away. and suddenly my bike weighs more than i do, when

before i couldn't feel my legs or the road, now i can barely push one foot over the other.

but this is my bike.

i bought it with my money, that i earned from one odd little job or another. a job as a swim teacher or a costumer or an artist or something. and no one was there for any of that. and that's why it was right.

i'm cutting fishnets into my face with the sharp ends of bobby pins, it's easier to peel off my skin that way, i'm not washing it, it's oily, it will slip right off. i'm enhancing my shape by deciding that i'm a new bra size and exhancing it by boiling pots of pudding. my pudding and my obsession and my inexplicable decision to wear a bra.

jessica, i understand. when two months ago you described the feeling of having the ground pulled out from under you and you have to look at a loaf of bread you've baked yourself and say

okay, this is my bread.

just to stay on your feet.

and at the time, i nodded but i didn't know. and now it's not extreme. not the worst, closer to the best. but the waves. it comes in waves synchronized to bike crossings and when i'm sucked under the waves in my sweet new homemade swimsuit IT'S EVERYONE'S FAULT. well, i guess just mine and yours or just mine or just yours.

and then there are young men on bicycles who smile and say hello to me as they reach up to stow a cigarette behind their right ear. everyone is friendly on saturday night on foster. hello, i breathe in a moth sigh because my attention is split between that single gear and everything else and i don't know if etiquette is real or just a thing to make wallflowers feel bad about being awkward and introverted.

so now it's time, i think, for weeks old already chewed chewing gum and new autobiographies to lust over lives that will never and can never be your own.