Skinny Girl

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It was nearly midnight when Keith finally gave up on the poem he was trying to write. He reached a serious level of saturation and more work was not making it any better. Different but not any better. Fatigue could flatten his writing into the same Hallmark drivel he hated; anything he did now would only have to be rewritten later.

He lit a cigarette and pushed the papers and books he had been using to the back of his desk. He realized that his room didn’t like him. The bed, the desk, the dresser, his ancient wooden hat rack, the rickety table that held the electric hot plate, the small refrigerator, none of these provided any warmth. They were unyielding objects that formed inflexible surfaces that could support him or bruise him, nothing more. What else should they be?

These thoughts convinced him that he needed some sort of distraction, something that he could throw himself into in excess while the weary synapses of his underbrain tried and retried every permutation of language and thought, reduced them to a few conscious artistic choices. He needed something consuming to focus on, but he thrashed about for a solution, realizing that his question was like a child's game — was it a person, place or thing? Sometimes activities or new places could provide the level of interest, of complete absorption, but that seemed wrong now. He leaned toward thinking it was a person.

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