Back from ice cream. I pour a half glass of scotch into a coffee mug. Two ice cubes. They crack and pop as I move through the house. Throw up once into the recently cleaned toilet. It smells like false orange. Ink jet cartridges. Try to write with the beat of some African song blaring across the distances of these carpet fibers clenched between the toes. Turn it down. Way down. Can't think between these beats. These words in another language from an album called

Missing you

Period.

She looked like a loose piece of string. Across the room. Under the dull buzz of the three sets of Christmas lights around the windows. Dancing around her head like flies in summer. Attractive. Horrible. Like she wouldn't be so slack sitting in the chair. Knees thrown casually together. This lazy head angle. If someone grabbed tightly to the other end. And pulled. A dare. I couldn't stop staring. Between bites of sticky sweet cream from a plastic spoon. Those perfect breasts through the silhouette of a lavender dress -- the color of parts of my hair. Her hair, red. The dark kind that usually only comes on the top of chocolate cakes -- from a bottle. Things we always only later regret. And the perfect way that her boots hit the right spot on her calves. I wondered what it might taste like to kiss her. Maple syrup and grape nuts.