DID YOU EVER JUST

I want a cigarette but I can't go smoke for awhile now maybe even until it gets dark because somebody just knocked politely on my door, twice, and when that happens I take stock of all the secrets I have piled in front of me and freeze like a rabbit who caught a whiff of foxmusk, and then a great many slabs of solid granite pound down between me and the door like those angryface death-traps in Super Mario Bros. and anyway then they went away and I'm hiding in my little rodent hole, quivering with nerve endings and horny on adrenaline.  

I just spent a few moments thinking about how, if someone were to break in here and kill me right now, I would hate to know that the last sentence I ever wrote had the word "horny" in it.  I am sorry. 

Is being a person of secrets also being a person of sadness?  Secrets have always licked me delicious, I ache to hear them, and tell them.  Not tell the secrets of others, though.  Those I lock tight away to savor the quiet masochism of keeping them.  

This week I went home to do laundry and found laying on the counter the old "Baby Books" my mom wrote for my brother and sister and me.  They are absolutely precious to me in the literal sense; my mom's swirly handwriting overflowing with kindness and love and optimism, along with little doodles for many of the entries.  Mine details such things as strange baby-habits I had (licking a corner of my pillowcase until it was sopping with saliva and feeling it with my fingers all night, what the fuck) and little columns of areas to work on to make me a well-adjusted human being (making eye contact with adults and not being afraid to talk to them).  

The entries have tapered off but she'll still write what's going on with us once every few years.  My brother and sister each have an entry from this June with a glowing review, but in mine under the same date there are just two bible verses about how god is all-powerful.  

Hey, mom, fuck you.  

No, not really.  I just wish she didn't view me as a total failure because I can't be a soldier of the Lord.  I say "can't" because it's not like a fucking choice or anything.  I guess my point is: she doesn't even know the half of it, and it guilts me something horrible sometimes.