Look at you, still believing in your shit.

Dinner with old friends, drinking wine and cackling at your clever remarks. Morning remorse. When will you learn to shut the fuck up?

He still has the dream in which he’s continued working on his long-abandoned novel and only now, after all these years, realizes he will have to start over. He always wakes with a heaviness in his chest. It wasn’t until after his father died that he recognized the feeling. He’d always sensed life had a plan for him, and he’d been right. There just aren’t any words for it.

He comes to in the bathtub with no memory of how he got there. He looks in her eyes and sees pity and fear. Has this happened before? Has he already asked her this? Eventually he retains her answers, hanging on like a drowning man, terrified she’ll let go.

Increasingly, he’d been thinking about simplifying his life.
Increasingly, he’d been thinking about drinking.