"I haven’t eaten anything today, or at least not yet. I got up early this morning, running on..."

“I haven’t eaten anything today, or at least not yet. I got up early this morning, running on four hours of sleep but it’s hard to tell because I’ve learnt how to cover up the bags under my eyes with enough makeup where no one can tell. I picked up my prescription at the pharmacy and sang to old jazz tunes in my car on the way home while the snow brushed past my window. I haven’t done much today, just drank four cups of coffee, smoked four cigarettes and painted a woman who I will never meet but who sometimes enters my dreams. I can feel her touching me but when I wake up I know it’s not real because I’ve never felt her skin against mine. I opened all my blinds, swept the floor twice and cleaned out my drawers. I found a box of old love letters you sent to me when our love was still growing, still in the midst of blossoming. I’m still in my pajamas, I took a bath and put my red sweater back on. I dyed my hair blue for the second time this month, the bathroom tiles have marks of change between them. I washed all my dirty laundry, hung up all the clothes that had been on the chair in the corner of my room for a couple of months now. I’ve been working so many night shifts that I kept telling myself and my mother that I would do it in the morning but never did, until today. I wrote a poem about changing, ripped it out of my sketchbook and tossed it into the almost full trashcan. I filled out a few job applications online, wrapped a few presents for a friend that has more on her mind than I could ever help organize. I went outside to smoke my fifth cigarette and only got down to the middle until I could no longer feel the tips of my fingers, so I put it out and went inside. It’s not even the middle of the day yet and I have already done all I could to keep me busy, to keep my mind from wandering off, from imagining the life we could have probably had if we would have just talked it through. I keep thinking about the day when you left, when I asked you if you had everything, if you needed anything, if you wanted to say anything or everything before you went away for good this time. It’s not even the afternoon and I am already over-thinking the words that left my mouth before you left the house. I wonder what else I can do to preoccupy my time in hopes of keeping my mind off of whatever it is that I cannot take back. It’s not even dark outside and I am already wondering when I will ever see you again, if I will ever see you again and what I will do right this time when you arrive at my doorstep.”

- "No matter how busy I am my thoughts somehow still lead back to you," - Colleen Brown