Nothin’ short of dyin’

Ye are the salt of the earth. But if the salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?   Matthew, 5-13

Came to on a stained mattress with my head full of stink bombs and itching powder. No woman. No cry. Just a flue of sunlight stabbing through the blinds. My mouth tasted like a dead animal had crawled in and died trying to escape.

Didn’t know what day it was until the quiet told me: Sunday. A silence with only the sound of my own breathing. That special kind of silence that wraps around your throat like a belt.

There was a warm beer still standing from last night. I drank it. Wasn’t bad so I had one more for dessert. This one tasted like piss and mildew, which meant it was working. A man’s got to stay consistent.  My hands were shaking but I got it down.

Breakfast of champions.

The room looked like the inside of a junkie’s purse. Clothes draped over a busted chair, empty bottles leering from the corners like old friends who never left. Pulled on a shirt I found under the bed. Smelled like cigarettes and spilled whiskey and a woman I couldn’t put a name to. Good enough. I didn’t bother with socks. Just shoes and general flintiness.

Washed my face in a sink that coughed brown water. Didn’t recognize the sad old rubbie staring back. Hair like barbed wire. Eyes yellow: two piss holes in the snow. Something crawling behind the pupils. I splashed water on my face but it didn’t help. You can’t wash off what’s under the skin.

Used my fingers as a comb and missed every goddamn knot. Staggered down the stairs like a ballet dancer with an infected toe. Out the door. Into the day. If you can call it that.

Lit a smoke with numb fingers that didn’t want to work. First drag felt like glass. I needed it to hurt.

Out on the street, it was dead quiet. Not peaceful — just dead. Everyone inside praying to gods they didn’t believe in, next to people they didn’t particularly care for. I walked. Didn’t know where. Didn’t particularly care.

A kid hoved into view kicking a can down the street, all jollity and ignorance. He looked at me like I was the monster waiting under his bed. He wasn’t wrong.

Some poor bastard was frying chicken. The smell hit me like an arrow straight through the womb of time. An arrow shot from nothingness to nothingness, with such force that only alcohol would bring it to earth at last. Took me back to something warm I must’ve lost along the way. A woman humming, sunlight on a linoleum floor. A home. A dog. Someone who’d answer the phone.

I walked. I always walk on Sundays. Everybody hiding behind drawn blinds, watching football. There’s something about a Sunday that scrapes against the ribs. You feel it in your teeth. Makes you wish you were drunk, or stoned, or six feet under. Anything but sober.

A city asleep is one thing. But a city pretending to be good? Hell. The sleeping city sidewalk is cracked, just like me. Just like everyone, if you dig deep enough. The lone and level sands stretch far away.

I saw a man in the park pushing his giddy, laughing little girl on a swing. The kind of laugh that comes from a place untouched by bills or booze or broken promises. Wanted to believe it could last, but it won’t. The world eats girls like that.

Sunday school voices spilled into the street. A church bell pretended to call sinners home while the undisguised odium of the congregation reminded us that we weren’t wanted. I let it wash over me like dirty water, ’cause there’s something in a Sunday that makes a body feel alone.