Protecting my ego, by imagining myself as a god who’s just ended a life, and just had to make a dirty martini out of whatever energy remained, before swilling it back with a backwards sense of taste in three loveless seconds of indifference, not unlike the way my thoughts fall from any hot shower moment in my head and begin to hang like fireflies over a vast field, a child-like whimsy still findable in mine, and even now, holding an empty jar-like pipe dream for catching wonder in, I can only be reminded, as I step out of the shower that mine as well be my ideal version of a mother, of promises that were made and weren’t kept, of each angler fish, fiery bait of hope dangling the false promise of a more illumined life over my consciousness. Well, we all know that shit doesn’t hang for long, never mind appear to positively glow in the double mirror of projection, so, you eventually grow up and become wise for someone else’s betterment. You drop whatever it is, make a cup of coffee, and go to work. Except the things I grew up detesting so passionately and, so, just had to learn everything I could about, have stayed on my mind since like forever, so attraction is what’s in doubt here. Despite my searching for the always elusive better perspective to hold myself up to, turning my own mind with my hand, and viewing it the way my grandfather viewed a cucumber from the garden and turned it, not unlike the way I once admired the little firefly inside its jar, it’s not hard to imagine my being sealed for a lifetime in a service profession I’m embarrassed to admit I can’t stand the sight of, and can barely breathe in, as some easily misunderstood way of requesting to be fulfilled, as some indirect way of simply expecting to be seen. Except I don’t want to be just seen as hanging out in all my naïve, juvenile, and bright-lighted splendor. Like the translucent abdomen of the firefly, the transparent body of the catching jar, and the way I cheer myself on, day after asphyxiating day, what I expect is to be seen through.