Shake.

The gray and black swirled skies above belch out cats and dogs viciously without any forethought or remorse. Gnawing, yelping, and clawing away in the already howling wind they approached the ground at terminal velocity. Visibility was gone as he carefully made his way across state lines.
He takes a sip of his tea.
The sweet taste of the honey on his lips reminds him of times better had and leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.
His current situation makes him think of circumstances that conspired into very similar events from ages ago, and he realized that the inevitable couldn’t be escaped no matter how far you drive. Things that were made to be forgotten for good reason now resurfaced with enough power to force him to pull to the side of the bypass, step out of the car, and simply sit in the slowly flowing water. He was shaking too much. He would kill himself or someone else if he kept driving, and he wasn’t ready for either of those specific outcomes yet. The water cools him down.
He imagines stars from a billion billion years ago that have burnt up their prehistoric nuclear fuel, and before words or the wheel were invented those beautiful forces of nature were long extinguished. The supernova spews radiation out for so much of the universe to see, and for eons. Focused jets of unequaled power send a massive death rattle of gravity, time, and radiation in two separate directions.
He just hopes that day, billions of billions of years ago, would catch up and get here already.
Oh, and that everything's lined up right while it barrels through the void.



One day I want nothing more than to express my feelings so honestly and concisely and so perfectly, that would of course be much better than I am able with my vocabulary, all of the feelings I have towards every single person I know.
So unabashedly truthful and mean and heartless that the experience felt by them would be what Dorian Gray went through when he gazed upon his portrait. When he looked at it and felt every sin and year and decadent act thrown at him from a past he was out ignoring.

I was told the other day by Sarah that I'm never mean when drunk. And Jordan's girlfriend Colleen went on to say how when Jordan was driving me home because I was too drunk to drive and I kept trying to let her have the front seat that it was very endearing.

I'm a fucking gentleman and a scholar when I'm drunk. Isn't that great?

I've been working more on abandoning the glass for the bottle less tonight. It's going well. I just keep getting up a lot. Which I find annoying.

I've also been working on my nostalgia as per usual when drinking alone. I look through the screen to the pictures of only a few years ago. I look visibly younger. My eyes have seen less and it's evident. I can tell I looked through things more and saw less in everything. And it hurts.
I wish I could have been more for the people who needed me then.
I just forged ahead then building and destroying and changing personal relationships. Not caring if they were good or bad choices. Because I knew I was young. I knew whatever happened I could deal. Because a million more years were ahead to make connections that mattered.

Mostly, I feel like there are parallel universes.

Millions of them. Like a fucking sci fi show. Universes where the only difference is the flip of a coin or a simple choice you made in the past. One that made you a millionaire. Or a hobo. Or green.
I think about the possibility of a universe where I made different choices and I'm surrounded by things and people and thoughts and jobs and a future where I'm supposed to be. And I feel out of place, because I'm not there in that one.
Clearly because something went horribly wrong in the space/time continuum. And I'm trapped in the wrong universe.

Clearly.

Memories flood my mind giving me glimpses into what I’ve been doing wrong all along and it’s a bit overwhelming. I look through books and gifts and letters from my past and despise the person I was, and to be honest, still am.
Here I sit.

There is always a little box. Either in actual box form, or book form, or envelope form, or bag form that a man peaks into from time to time. It is the box that is his past. This is the past he keeps from the rest of the universe. From God if he could. His oldest roots in himself that he decided to keep physical traces of. A ring, a piece of paper, an old keychain, pendants, receipts, letters, paperclips.

Something that reminds him of a time in his past. Not better. Not always worse.

I look through my box(believe it or not while drinking) and I find the origami turtle and paper crane of a dead girl. A keychain of a prom picture of a girl that is now married, and me. A ring of absolutely no value my absolutely insane uncle gave me when I was a child. None of it is connected, but that is really like most things in life. These are the links to not particularly fond memories but ones that have shaped me at the core of my being nonetheless. I haven't added anything to this particular box in years.

But as I look around my new apartment surrounded by things that were given to me by very important people in my life, moved by my best friends to their current positions, books signed by friends I haven't spoken to in years, and countless other objects with countless other infinitely important memories I realize that every time this man opens his box to peak inside from time to time he is really just opening the door.