under_construction raze all i ever saw her drink was southern_comfort. it was too sweet for me. it tasted like cough syrup with a dirty syringe hiding at the bottom of the bottle. some nights she cut it with coke. i watched her drink that syrup straight from the bottle the night of her eighteenth birthday. we walked for half an hour to get to her house. gord left me there with people i knew well enough to trust but not well enough to tell my secrets. i didn't have any money in my pocket. i didn't know how to get home. he said he'd come back for me. he lied. he dropped acid with brandon at the walker power building. they convinced themselves the place was haunted. they stayed there all night, lying on the floor of their rented room, listening to creaks and groans with the stethoscopes that lined their bellies, waiting for ghosts that never showed themselves. kevin thought i was as drunk as he was. i wasn't drunk at all. i was just a little high. we played a game of pool. he kept laughing and grabbing the back of my cue stick so i couldn't shoot. i won anyway. kevin made out with her on a couch. i guess that was his birthday present to her. they were too wasted to make it work. what they did to each other looked less like kissing and more like they were mouthing words they'd forgotten how to form. if there were any ghosts out that night, they were haunting her house. her father in the dark when i went upstairs to use the bathroom. his glasses and beard-burnished face. his crazy eyes. him. if he said anything, i couldn't hear it over the music she was blasting in the basement. he gave me a horror movie smile. i think he was trying to be friendly. when it was three in the morning and everyone else had passed out, i left. there were no people anywhere. no cars. not even a stray cat. maybe everyone was dead. maybe the smile that scared the shit out of me sent a shockwave through the city. maybe i was the only person left alive. i didn't know where i was. i found a street that was blocked off. they were breaking it down to make it new again so the weight of everything could make it old a second or third or fifteenth time. everything that breaks needs to be broken even worse before it can be rebuilt. you keep learning that. it's easy to forget. don't worry. you'll learn it again. well shatter me then, i sang to the night. but the night didn't do a thing. it wasn't listening to me. i had to climb over a traffic barrier to make it to the next intersection. i decided anything that was half destroyed had to lead me home. and it did. 220205 what's it to you? who go blather from