I’ve been driving around side streets that keep splitting off into vein-like structures thinking about how sleep has given up on me for five days now and oh look at that — its the city skyline emitting golden pinpricks and waves of stardust, out into the atmosphere, over miniature houses directly into my tired, tired pupils that are big and dark and spinning endlessly like cracked teacup saucers. A quarter tank takes me to the mostly empty parking lot of Starlight on Seventeen at 2:45 in the morning, underneath a glowing rock that sifts energy into the orifices of my zombie body just trying to make it through the next few years of an undiagnosed genetic brain malfunction chemical mix up.
My steps echo as I wander across the parking lot and sing a song my father showed me to no one underneath a green and yellow sign turning slowly through molasses air on another hazy summer graveyard shift and I don’t know it yet but that image will forever be with me. A bell chimes against the glass front door with the sole duty of alerting the wait staff that I am here! and I would like a seat in a booth please, and yes I am alone, and yes I am aware that I should not be and that it’s not safe for a teenage girl like me to be wandering around empty diners at 3:00 am.
I sit down at a booth near a window looking over the highway that will never rest in its history of existence, as it hosts bright exit signs and cars and street lamps and trucks all buzzing away to the city and twisting up into the stillness of the Ramapo Mountains. My waitress brings over a menu though I told her I’d only like a black coffee and says that I really should eat, I look thin and pale and tired and whatever I order is on the house, truly.
Just coffee please.
While I wait my mind does not and floats into the dark room where I spent most of my high school days mixing chemicals, stopping and fixing, stopping and fixing only to eventually be told that a dark room isn’t necessary and you can edit photos on the computers much faster. My computer was tired, just like me and would break down, just like me and I would lose whatever I was working on, all the time. It wasn’t until I was back in the dark, mixing chemicals, stopping and fixing that I felt like everything was going to be okay.
Truly, just coffee please. I’ll be okay.
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