Month one, Day 7 Time: Late

I woke up from a bottle crashing on the landing outside the paper thin cover of my feverish eyelids; so hot, I imagine I can fill the minuscule veins pumping iron rich blood in and out, slowly heating the papery skin in the cool night.

Spilt liquid sloshing against the floor with a final, dull splat as it rushes to escape through the permanently damp, wooden floorboards. Had I been dreaming? Shards of glass follow, scattering on the creaking floorboards, barely contained by the flimsy brown vacuous sack still holding a bottle's shape. A moment later the drunk stupidly stumbles up the continuing stairs. The insomniac in me guesses three am, perhaps, if I buy him an alarm clock, he will sleep. No halved dreams tonight; the fog hasn't lifted for three days. So tired. Tired of waiting, lying. Still enough for Sleep to visit, to stay for more than five minutes. But it can't, chased away by my incessant questioning, quickly it retreats farther back into the dark abyss of congealed answers, lost again. I give in, and sit up in the fetid darkness watching the shadows from the window flicker against the bare walls; free to haunt in their entirety without being broken up and distorted by furniture. I shift to the tension in my arm, the need to write, and stave it off by rising and crossing the room away from the treacherous black journal. Distancing the need as much from my mind, as from the packing crate next to the stacked mattresses. The tension not relaxing but becoming overpowered by the aches, the need to exhaust this restless form as much as the sentient mind. Recovering from the forced stillness, the body recoils like a caged-up panther. Pacing, pacing in it's cramped cage stretching lithe muscles for the day the door springs open. I want the door open. Instead, I bend over the dingy white ceramic basin, frozen water coursing through the gaps in fingers and down my face. The shock wiping restless inactivity from my mind. Icy, clear-- a blank slate. Above the sink the cracked mirror reflects a silhouette. Switch. Yellowed, garish light filters across the silhouette, slowly illuminating, as my eyes adjust, to reveal the shadowed identity. But whose? The face that stares back is not mine. The cutting sharp, chiseled jaw, lost to the gauntness of the face and the hollows of the cheekbones sticking out at too harsh an angle. The pale shock of swallowed, ill skin, that hasn't seen the sun's light in months. Dark, hard circles under the eyes enveloping them, but not quite stifling the piercing steel blue eyes. Dulled iris like that of a blade sharpened and resharpened , beckoning to peer beneath, like a well to their harrowed depths. Sparking the grey from behind, matches striking flint, mesmerizing and dancing like a wolf. Dangerous? Hungry, eating away at something, like a wolf. Thick black lashes bending with the ragged ends and stray shards peeking through long black daggers. Sharp almost aristocratic nose, distinguished on any other face, a signature feature. So unusual, but lost on this sunken ghost. Who am I? He mouth's the words back at me slowly without recognition, the words lost and splintered by plaster uncovered by a large gap in the old crusty mirror. Red, hungry hints of lips splay across the thousand faceted fragments on the edge of the crack. I touch the hollowed cheek, my hand shrinks back from the frozen, moist flesh. The image is a stranger, I don't recognize my own face.