Hello,
the worst thing about stopping Ambien was that I never did it with anybody else.
I did it alone in my bathtub.
I did it alone, smoking in the water, & when it kicked in I’d let the Salems cook my hands & it wouldn’t matter.
Consequences go somewhere else when I’m on it.
It’s incredible not to care.
I did it alone in front of television & let the hum of the TV become tinnitus in my ears, then everything bending in on itself, white. The sound of white becoming the touch of something warm & strawberry & my phone calling old numbers.
My phone calling my ex, talking to her mom.
Remember that time I took Ambien & came to your scent on my sweater?
Remember that time I woke up playing basketball naked across the street, on drugs shooting threes at 4am, raising my eyes to nothing & that, yes, I was alive enough to be doing something other than waiting?
Coney Island
i took the Q to Coney Island & walked &
the water was black & shapeless & i
drank clear liquor through a straw & got sick with
the white-haired girl who was always there, by the sea,
who had the fiancée, she said, but no ring, no name.
