Are you comfortable with your disquieting lifestyle? Does it bake your brain to thread yourself into soul-rotting colorlessness?

I am asking you, you!

Does it . . . ?

I am anxious to hear what you have to say! I demand your attention!

Here I am: in a little room stacked atop a little house. I can see the highway from the place where I rest my quivering head in the darkness of every morning. For days I have seen frost on the transparent filter that separates my Inside World from their Outside World. Here it is filled with a glowy-glow weighted down by lullabies and washed-out photographs.

Out there: it is murky and haunted. Fog and rain swirl around the white lights that hang their heavy heads over the midnight traffic like somber undertakers. My body does not permit me to do anything but watch the red lights of cars shine and shine on that rain-slicked road. It is too cold to do anything else.

It is too cold for me to be anywhere else.

Here I am! I have not been anywhere in months.

I purchase food and sit in classrooms governed by professional thinkers. I nod my head and blink at all the right times. I fill little black pads of paper with daydreams and nighttime thoughts. I write most frequently: “I wish to be home.”

I draw octopuses and clouds and tall, tall characters that all have the same haircut.

They have my haircut.

I draw a speech bubble above the heads of these characters.

“Fuck,” they often say. Sometimes, “Yes, yes, no!”

Below them I write the thoughts in my head. They’re all jumbled up into a clump of chewing gum and seashells and guitar strings! I can’t iron them out!

People say things to me, and I wince. My mind slams into the surface of the planet. My mouth fumbles with vowels and the sound of air. When I am unable to articulate anything resembling language, they turn away. They say quiet things and make noble efforts to laugh sadly at my indifference to what fills my eyes. I can’t God damned think when the sun is out. Whatever it is I am thinking now — and Jesus Lord God, is this thinking, what I’m doing now? — is horrifying and not long for this world. My head is a fishbowl filled with oatmeal and screws and old keys. When I die — and when is that, again? — it will pop and all, all, all of this will vanish into the air like vapor.

I am able to “communicate” only five-percent of it here, to you, whoever you are. Are you a friend? Are you alive? Can you see me in your head, if you close your eyes and clear the taffy from your vision?

. . . are we friends?

Unlikely, I say!

I have only one friend. He writes this now. I am he!

And what a thing we have, the two of us.

We watch the snow fall on the week-ends!

And we watch it melt in a day’s length . . .

Tonight there is cold, cold raining falling from space. It falls on the roof of my tiny home. It swirls around the ghostly lights that leer outside my bedroom window. I look at them every night, and I ask no-one, “Are you comfortable being you?”

You are, of course, soul-rotting colorless. I don’t mean to be cruel! I am only asking honest questions, tonight, and I require only honest answers. We respect each other, you and I. And that’s how I have mustered up the darn-tootin’ gumption to ask such a personal question.

I hope that you’ll forgive me for doing so.

It’s not like we’re friends, you and I!

You are a no-body. I am something else. I am something that my mother would be displeased to know can even exist!

Maybe that’s worse than being a no-body . . .

In which case, you’ve got it swell, chum-oh-chum!

I just look at these lights and hope for snow. Is it snowing now . . . ?

Will it snow again . . . ?