don't get me wrong, dear, in general I'm doing quite fine

I can remember when it was all about MoonPies and doll babies, when entire chapters of time were measured by hours sold to that blue-rimmed trampoline, and being completely barefooted. That was before I knew of the intoxicating relief that would later make sense of my gagging confusion. It came long after I had washed the black from my soles and the idea of MoonPies had become something far more sinister.

The eighteenth summer changed it all. It altered the seasonal orbit of my center, yet kept me in rhythm with my alternative manner. Perhaps everything I knew had always been working toward the speed that defies gravity, that broken centrifugal force. If I had only known what clues to look for maybe I could have beaten the surprise, or at least been prepared. I wasn't, and so instead my methods fell into the palms of instinctive of reaction. Prideful highs became trend and trends turned to habit. The more I tried to push all of the pieces back into place, the further they fell away from assignment. The rest is unnerving and I'd rather not wander into those depths tonight.

It's coming. I can smell it and I feel its lightness breaching winter's stale death. It lifts the cold fingers of its foe one by one until it eventually has no grip left by which to linger.

Bikini Season. Unraveling. Restless Nights Hot With Familiar Fury.

[I'm not yet ready.]

Today, standing between two customers I felt the crawling twitch of contorting muscles. Like an old break now healed that aches when a storm is near, there it was. I felt the anxious pang for the first time in months, synonymous with the bursting blooms of overachieving buttercups.

I can do nothing to prolong the inevitable[s].

"Nothing is certain except everything you know can change."

I have found my way back to that eighteenth spring and again I realize that I could have chosen to follow a different fork - and that I can now. But naturally, I'm roping in a tighter grip on the untamable, working to misguide the unchangable. With each forward step it seems that I slide a little closer to that alluring place hidden among damnation...

...and I really don't know how to do it differently.