FFF

Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but in reflection not having any...

money for another pack of smokes should have been the bartender's first clue that i wasn't going to be able to pay for that sixth vodka either. it didn't matter. certainly not to me, anyway.

i stared into my drink and tried not to linger on any of the memories i had remaining to me.

everyday now, i wake up and know less and less of who i am, who i was. where i had been, or where i should have been going. waking up, and looking into the closet of a stranger. who wears these things? and looking around, finding no one else, realizing i must. wandering the halls, staring into the pictures of people in places, and not knowing their names. feeling that feeling when you pass someone on the street who is familiar in face, but you can't recall why, with every picture on the walls. the diploma with the name i assumed now was mine.

i only speculate that the things i call my memories are mine, and really, they're only flashes of deja vu. it seems like i've been to this bar before, and it seems correct that i should be wearing this dress, although i can't recall either of these things clearly before today. so i drink the drinks i think this person i am must like, and smoked until the pack was empty.

i haven't talked to anyone here, as i haven't any small talk to make. am i employed? i don't know. am i married? am i straight? do i like the music here? i don't know. i don't know.

and the not knowing isn't making me crazy, it's making me more invisible to everyone else here. people, as far as i can tell, are products of their environment and genetics, and i don't know any of these things about myself anymore, so i begin to exist less and less. literally. it is possible to feel translucent? when i looked in the mirror this afternoon, across the bar and slightly hazed with smoke and liquor, i don't know which reflection is mine. so i wave into the mirror, and look for the person waving back. was my hair that color yesterday? it isn't familiar. and i look at something at the bottom of the pond, something obscured and crooked by refraction and distance, and when it waves, i know it's me. without the mirrors, i can't remember what my own face looks like.

i'm not worried about paying for these drinks, because i came here to die today. i've died to the world already, and have died in my own memory, so it seems the next natural step. i want to break my own heart with this longing for something i can't remember, but even that begins to fade, and everyday wandering through the world without direction has lessened the longing.

i figured i'd smoke, because i found cigarettes and ashtrays in the house i woke up in. i found the pills, and looking them up, figured the appropriate dosage, when mixed with liquor, would make me translucent enough to fade completely away. i fondle the 'scrip bottle in my pocket like a lover, and hope that i can remember to take them when my liver is sufficiently crapped out from the vodka. i even wrote myself a note on the palm of my hand, in blue ink from a pen i found on the bar, that simply says "remember".

i stare into my drink and wonder why this is happening to me, and wonder if it's happening to anyone else in here, perhaps everyone? i try not to think, because all the logical paths in my mind go dead end somewhere. so it's moot to think..

if i could just remember one detail of any other day that didn't feel like a commercial, or a radio song, then i might reconsider. but looking at the note on my hand, i sense only the word 'remember' floating above the bar on a hand-shaped cloud of smoke. somehow, that makes me sad, somehow emptier. so i stare into my drink instead. and wave again at the woman across the bar from me, who has blue ink smeared across her palm.

but she doesn't look like she knows who i am, even as she waves back, so i stare into my drink.