it looks like your dog died.

the impact of knowing, really knowing and understanding the things we only suspect, when you hear yourself speaking the truth as you knew it and knowing you didn't even believe it then but now you know it's true, but being unable to stop the collision course you're on because the tracks are bound to your feet and the car is closed and the doors don't open til it's the next stop and when they open you collapse on the platform and just want to breathe some fresh air, but the fresh air falls in love with your lungs even though you're polluted, ruined, fucked.

the city you see when you climb the stairs welcomes you with its concreteness, its curves, its lines, its noises, its smells, its grandiosity, but it's impartial, it's indifferent, it treats you the way it treats everyone and you are no more special to it than anyone else who crosses its streets and wonders at how remarkable it is, except it does every once in a while shine its eyes at someone special and that someone is not you.

so you go to the building where you used to live hoping to find something comforting there, inside the darkness that you know so well, but it's slowly been emptied out until there's nothing but old letters stuffed in the mailbox with your name on them, letters you don't even care to open because they don't matter anymore, and your keys no longer turn the locks and your neighbors won't even return your greetings and you realize that's because you don't live there anymore and you can't go back there ever again even though you spent a lot of time there trying to make it a beautiful place to live.

finally, you go to the only place you have, this hotel room where you sleep at night and it's got your stuff there, things that remind you who you are and you hide inside it, waiting for the next day to bring you someone worth knowing, really knowing, someone worth loving, really loving, someone you can be proud of and excited about, and hope that they don't turn out to be the things you've already known will never be the way you wish they could be.