tyson raze i saw a version of you from an alternate timeline. same build. same enormous beard. same khaki shorts that must be grafted to your skin by now. you were sitting on a park bench with your kid. you don't have a kid. but if you did, you would have talked to him the same way your doppelganger talked to his son. you would have screamed at him when he asked to see your phone. "no i wanna play with it! no i wanna play with it! mine! mine! mine!" i thought of the time we went to the mall. teenagers with nothing better to do. you knew someone who worked at a health supply store. "can i get something that'll get me high but isn't illegal?" you asked her. "like, do you have any samples or something?" she spent a minute in a storage room and came back with a few unpackaged diet_pills. "this is sort of like speed," she said. "but you wanna take it easy with this stuff. it could give you a heart attack." you grinned and talked about swallowing a pill before playing a show. you probably did that, too. maybe after getting drunk enough to believe the stuff was helping your buzz. i flushed mine down the toilet. i was skinny enough already. and uppers didn't hold any appeal for me. i didn't want to trick myself into thinking i could fly. i wanted to sink like a heavy stone. when we were standing outside a book store, waiting for my dad to pick us up, you said, "watch this. i'm gonna hold the door open for the next hot girl who walks by. watch how easy it is to pick up chicks." you saw someone you liked the look of. "hi," you said. "how_are_you?" she didn't say anything back. she didn't even look at you. she stepped inside and left you holding steel and glass in your fat little hands. i used to wonder what would happen when the sharp end of one of your cut corners cleaved you in two. but you always found a way to patch yourself up and limp away from whatever carnage you caused. you could bullshit your way out of anything. you should have gone into politics. you would have been a natural. 220522 ... nr i met you last week and you weren't what i expected. you didn't react to excitement i expressed about the sunset. or about the new cool-looking pizza place we passed. or about the shows that were coming up. or anything not already established to have been worth reacting to by your brain. 220522 what's it to you? who go blather from