Some May Call It Void

He was sleeping in a kitchen in the West during that tail-end-time of the summer when the leaves begin to rot, renting it from a friend who was sleeping in the bedroom of the apartment. At night he sat on a broken bench near the window in his underwear, distracted from the book in his hand by the contorted images that unwound in his head of some old house on a hill, steam rising off a river, splashes of otherwise silent toads. He reached this hallucinatory state every night before sleeping, finally lying on the floor when he couldn't open his eyes any more. As long as he could sleep immediately & not listen to the purr of the refrigerator beside his head, the sound of the roommate's grunts as he fucked the girl he was seeing at that time. He also couldn't bear the pain in his stomach from eating only bread & butter until the pieces clogged up his intestines so that he was walking around with two weeks worth of bread in his stomach, enough to feed a glutinous church congregation. During the day he would wander around streets half-drunk with plenty of excuses to talk up older women who basked in the waning light of sidewalk cafes. Ask them if they thought the world was getting more chaotic or if we were only getting worse at enjoying chaos. Drink up what other people left in their glasses at the bar. Stare at the swans that skated under the bridge. Waiting for them to open their eyes & dip their heads. Coming back home so many nights through the cemetery, sometimes hearing the rain still fall through the trees onto the headstones. One night he returned to find the American girl & his roommate leaning out the window in the kitchen, spilling some champagne on the ledge, some on the mattress & sheets on the floor. They passed the bottle to him & he took a few sips & with his guitar he began singing "Mean Old World" by T-Bone Walker as the girl dangled her naked leg out the window & the roommate swayed his head.