Astray

How is one led astray?

You cannot be led astray, to an extent. I’d like to believe I was. But I chose this life.

I chose to be deceitful, mean, callous. Chose to slot away my dreams and ambitions for liquor and tobacco. Chose to lay those kind beneath the rails for the conductor with a silver tongue. That is me.

Another two empty orange bottles on my nightstand, another belly plumped with liquor. My mouth is constantly sour, my lungs constantly aching, heart rapid in its cage.

Hate. Ache. It’s all the same in the end. It feels the same. It lingers, at least. An emptiness that swallows whatever it can.

I feel the joy, and it slips right into the maw of the beast. The beast is me, though. It files the happiness into the same hazy thing where dreams live.

My fingertips, should I have a typewriter like I wish, would ache from my incessant typing.

I am poor. I am hurt. I am in debt. I am so sick. I am so tired. I am so hungry.

Mental hell, what I have.