I sink into the LCD like I’m on LSD.

It pings with another lost opportunity to fade

Full-force into another fuzz-brained decision.

Static on the line puts me in my place.

No date, no drug den for crawling in or checking out

V-Day Eve spent as envious as any other.

I’m a character caught in cardboard purgatory,

Whose plans were foiled by a masturbatory MC.

Sick of the NPC life surrounded by empty boxes,

I wanna go postal, light up a stick of PCP like TNT.

My fuse is shorter than my prescription bottle.

My shelves and desk creep back and shudder,

Put off by the plume of smoke haunting my head.

I’m a Sunday comic kid whose doodles have turned

Into daggers pointed at another pout-mouthed fuckboy. 

My face is flare gun red, my black fit-and-flare speckled red.

It’s just the drip of another Jagerbomb, but I wish it meant more,

That I was “Cheers!”ing to the boy worth no more than my glare.

I gift myself another shooter, because it’s all I’m opening this Valentine’s.

Popped my sobriety-chip cherry with a screwdriver, light on the ice.

Light on my feet, I lock my bedroom door from the other side,

Stumble out into the living room alone, dissociate into soundwaves.

Turn up the stereo, snort up white noise until the room starts shaking.

Thresholds bend and support beams blend in the blue strobe lights.

I nurse my ego like the bruised back of a black cat,

Unsure if I’m helping or hurting, which of us is worse off.

Better to live unlucky in the shadows, or free in an alley?

Live off someone’s leftovers or be the waster raising a fat fist?

Shooed too many off my doorsteps to be called clingy,

Lapped up too much evaporated milk to say I’m self-reliant.

So, I just sip up White Russians, wishing one of us would drown.

Paige Johnson is editor-in-chief of Outcast-Press. They want to read and write stories catering to slangy benders, slutty barmaids, and the general scum of the earth–so long as there’s an ironic, lyrical ring to it. @KettyKat8 and @OutcastPress