there's still a little bit of your taste in my mouth

Last night, after the ill-conceived bet was made, I endeavor to sleep, but was for whatever reason drawn to the living room computer instead. On the desktop was a file entitled Sam’s stuff that my brother had rescued from the hard drive before he re-birthed it last summer. The file contained the fraught musings and emotional epithets of a barely functional and wholly isolated 18 and 19 year old me. Although most of what I found there was old poetry that I probably would deny writing if anyone cared to make the accusation, there were a few documents that actually managed to stir memories I had, until then, nearly relegated to the underside of my mattress.
I hold a dear friend of mine partly responsible for this trip down memory lane, since he reintroduced a desperate thirst for Damien Rice into my blood which inevitably leads me to recollection.
Damien rice is sort of a period piece in my life. Although I doubt that I will ever outgrow his voice, it is definitely a very particular soundtrack. Blowers Daughter brings me bodily to the sunflower laden bike path behind Richards that I accidently found that summer. That place was magical. A piece of utopia in the middle of suburbia. And of course, Volcano, although never one of my favorite Rice songs, reminds me of a night that I doubt I will ever forget.
All of this at 3AM, 5 hours before Shakespeare.
I reread the rambling anguish that I scribbled in gushing fragments after Katie’s death. The slightly more poised attempts I made to write in the observational style of Bukowski, and my best attempts to emulate Cummings. Each document made me feel more and more like the hesitant, terrified person that I was, what seems like an eternity ago.
It also made me realize that I am not that unlike that frightened child. I am thinner, more social, which really says almost nothing, but I am confident only superficially. I am self assured only in my worth as a sex object to a small percentage of the population. I still allow myself to be defined by the faulty perception of my edifice. I still gutturally sell myself for empty desire. I am still willing to ruin myself for something I want only theoretically so that I can feel valuable for a few fleeting minutes.
The only calculable difference I see is that now I can be more easily sold, and therefore must almost daily remind myself that consumption is irreversible.
I’m feeling very small today.