I never once thought of my mind as a place where thoughts would come and go until the day I needed to illuminate my “No-Vacancy” sign. I decided to build an expansion out of Lego bricks and electrical tape, adding a tower to the back of my makeshift skull. My brother held my neck straight as to not disturb my tenants, but it seems that no matter how essential an upgrade is, there will always be nostalgia for an obsolete object.
Stress decides to pay me a visit. I never invited him or his wife, but they stop by after every vacation because my log cabin falls in between Eden and the Vatican. They eat the flowers in my gilded garden and wash it down with the caramel condensation on the inside of my glasses. After they leave, I feel as though the support beams holding up my heart have been collapsed and my heart lies amongst the rubble now laying in my stomach. It crushed my cat.
My father couldn’t find my shoes. He claims that he had tied them to the tree bark on the alligator tree, but I knew he was lying, the lake had burned it down years ago. Perhaps if I dug down to the roots left from the stump, I could find the cardboard boats that I had previously used to strangle individuality and merge into a cardboard cut-out of America’s Sweetheart. It’s strange how we love to be ourselves when no one is around and hate it when someone catches us.
Whiskey marches into my morning coffee like a foreign militia, debaucherously enforcing an oligarchy inside of my liver. My teeth levitate from their gums and a numbness expands into my mouth, heading from my teeth into my jaw, then hooks pull up the corners of my mouth. All the logic previously residing at the end of my neck goes to sleep and my body goes on cruise control. My cherry eyes look at the world through the lens of a fun house mirror. I go to my bed and power down for the day. When I awake, new guests named Regret and Shame come to take up another room in my Lego hotel for idle thought.