why are you so yellow and pale?

a wise man once told me that dying wasn't the disease, living was.

tonight, i believed it all over again.

but there's a lot to be said when you look up with fever and see the best friends you ever had ... some of them translucent and shimmering with ghost, some of them alive well and unspeaking, some of them pounding at the floor to be let out, some of them locking eyes with you and your smile.

some of them ... we learn to be without. absence swells and bloats to fill the space where a healthy afternoon of cigarettes and tea used to be. it squeezes out all those drug benders and talks in the middle of the carpet, growing thick. and just when you thought it was big enough for its goddamn britches, you watch it push out the only person you ever loved.

all you can do is sit there, and wait for them to come back.

tonight was a lot like a disease.