Independent Variables.

i begin each day impatiently splashing water on my half-dreaming face. the water, still cold as it gushes out from the hot water faucet, cant keep up because the heater is too slow to catch up and like murphy's law only becomes warm once i've forgotten that i had wanted it so, right at the moment that i go to rinse my mouth out, at just the moment when i would have wanted something cold and refreshing to hit me. next a worn-out towel, stained with a building collection of night-befores' mascara haphazardly removed in a drunken haze, is used to dry my face, pouring old dirt back into my pores, reversing any hope for a clean start i may have had for the day.

glancing back upwards toward my reflection, i meet my own eyes and look deeply into the woman who stands before me. the visceral response varies, sometimes there is a sigh, sometimes a smile, sometimes one accompanies the other, but its never definitely positive or absolutely negative, just a momentary, most sincere reaction. i never know quite what to make of her; in that first impression of the day i stand feeling somewhere between empowered and horrified. she is somewhere between stunning and easily dismissible. palms covered in globs of what looks like melted "skin-color" crayon reach up and rub themselves across my skin, hands to my face like a game of peek-a-boo, temporarily blocking my view, as a false complexion spreads across in a filmy layer of perfection from widow's peak to chin, smoothed over from ear to ear. then each eye opens and shuts again, to receive a long stroke of black ink to wing out above them, it gives her glamour and intrigue, its gives her a sense of having a persona; some mystique to justify her guardedness.

there are clothes, hangers lined up, holding countless items purchased in a confidence downward spiral; in one of a the many self-loathing black-outs, where a void was filled by the dim florescent lighting of a dressing room and an overzealous sales girl, much heavier than you, says so much just with her eyes, saying by just the look on her face just how much she'd like to look like you, to wear anything the way you're wearing that right now. or there's the dress that you first snuck away to be with someone new in, the one you wore the night that you pretended you were using him too, before the months passed and you realized it was you who had been had. or what about the jeans you wore with the heels and insisted you were taller, because you wanted to be the one in charge just for once.

settle on the shiny tight things you wore the first time you slept with the taken man next door, you could still have him any time you wanted, if you wanted, and that thought is enough to keep you from losing it all together, even though it should make you feel like shit, especially when you look his woman right in the eyes and smile.

always running late, i lock the front door from the inside and today the weather is uncommonly appropriate for the season. gray and chilling the sky is falling and the clouds are resting now right upon the ground. my sanctuary, my car, i hesitate before starting off for work, i catch myself in mid-thought with a smirk growing wide and sinister peaking up the corners of my lips. i was thinking of how i heard about the ways you have trapped yourself in a miserable mess of your own making and i was reaping every seed of pleasure i could from it.

i know that i am not always as selfish as i am today. i know that i do not wish any harm. i know that there are real tragedies occurring, human suffering beyond my imagination's capacity. still, i check my mirrors and turn the key and wonder out loud, "am i going to be independent today because i want to be, or because i have to be?"