If I could write something, something that would express my current mood as accurately and completely as possible, if I could write something relevant right now, I bet it would be good.

I bet people would like it, the way the phrases flowed and the sentences sang and the words wound and wound around the central core of inescapable truth that, for now, I'm happy.

I bet people would like it, but I can't write it. Too much of anything, even the truth, is still too much.

Anyway, fuck you, universe!

I may be down, but I'm not out.

I don't know how many steps there are - I think about sixteen - because I've never taken time to count them. Hell, I've never had the spare brain capacity to count them because I'm too busy being happy or sad during those times when I use those particular stairs.

The coincidental part is that my mood parallels my altitude.

I always run up, sometimes two steps at a time, my ever-widening smile betraying the calmness that I strive to project just because I feel like it's expected and not weird, and I always trudge down, my frown broadcasting my defeat to the world.

In case you didn't guess already, I'm really bored right now. So I'm babbling, albeit in written form.

Last evening, for an hour or so to anyone unfortunate enough to notice me but a million years from my own perspective, I glared at my phone and I waited to die. It may have seemed that I did other things during that time - I appeared to chain-smoke and breathe and blink my eyes and all sorts of other mundane things - but those were mere illusions. Reflexive and involuntary actions, and nothing more. Nothing mattered to me except my phone, and the fact that it was silent.

My phone was going to ring, see. Actually, it was going to woo-hoo if you really need to know that small detail. My phone was going to woo-hoo, and then I was going to answer it. And then I was going to listen for a few seconds. And then I was going to say four words, assuming that I'd be able to speak at all, and then I was going to die.

I found myself wondering what my next reincarnation would be, what the next version of Dave would be like. The last one, the current version of myself, had gone on a fairly decent run. Decent, but not good, and certainly not great. The old saying is that nice guys finish last, and while I may not have been bringing up the absolute rear, sometimes second place is just as bad. Sometimes second place is the worst thing that could ever happen. Like when you've dedicated your entire life to a single race.

It was a false alarm. My phone made its woo-hoo sound, and I saw that it was a text message, and I sighed with relief. My death would not, I knew, be delivered via such an impersonal conduit, it would have come via voice. I've earned that much, I'm sure.

So, I'm still here. For now.

Despite all initial indications - despite, at times, hundreds thousands of latter indications - some people are just not nice, at least not when it really matters.

It doesn't make a difference, though, even though every spare instance of logical thought screams at you that it should make a huge difference, it simply doesn't. Not in the long run, anyway. You know what you know, and you feel what you feel, and the sad truth is that the two are not always complimentary.

You find yourself forced to choose between the truth and the fantasy, but it's not such a daunting task, because there is no choice. The heart wins, every time without fail or even much hesitation, the heart wins.

In summary, I'm fucked.

Fingers fumbling finding feeling fondling finally forcefully fusing firmly.

Looking over the fence. Admiring the green grass. Barely noticing my neighbor, my mirror-image, coveting my lawn.

Some forces attract and others repel. Sometimes there's a balance, and this bullshit I use instead of a life makes a little bit of sense.

Tasting the sour grapes. Wondering if I can ever love them. Realizing that I already do.

I have this word that keeps emanating from my lips.

It's not a nice word, and it's certainly not an earned word.

I wish the word would stop being the sound that my lips make when they decide to make an ostensibly random sound.

I wish the word would go back to hiding inside my head, with its brethren, until the day when it's really needed.

Not that I expect that to happen.