26

Setting the paper rolodex in the corner of my room ablaze seemed like the right thing to do.

---the only thing to do, in fact.

Just a catalogue of my favorite mistakes and the growing list of my contemporaries that were starting to drop like flies,

It wasn't the book it was in the Golden Age,

when Sunset Blvd. was something else and just driving up and down it, you could hear Bing Crosby and an imaginary horn section making it all so glamourous

But they left me in here,

behind these shades---

and these TV dinners and tray tables that made them feel like contributors of sorts

---and to my own devices,

Which, as it turns out, were full of matchbooks from The Brown Derby, egg nog, and things they would put in zip lock bags at the crime scene.

---things that were the big Fuck You

I wasn't the devil.

I wasn't an angel.

I wasn't even someone's imaginary friend.

---even way up here, up in smoke