You think you're creating something new. Not because you actually think it in a conscious and intentional way but because you feel it. Every thought in your head is a stranger, and mashed up behind the smoke in your eyeball as you try to make out the pictures on the far wall, it becomes something altogether unique and unexpected. Your right brain wants to layer it onto the sculpture in any old place that makes your gut calm with vague satisfaction. Your left brain updates the index and deposits it neatly at the end of a row.

One tick on the jukebox can take it all out of focus. A song sidles up to you, cradling your elbow, an acquaintance who feels itself too familiar. It buys itself a drink, invites itself to join you, and reminds you where you've met. The memory comes back in pieces, obstructed by the here and now that are vying for your attention. You're in the bar but sitting on that couch and that fight is going on, yet you're still smoking the very same cigarette in between sips of a strong V&T. How did *that* happen?

I blinked but couldn't make it go away. The straight line between us crumpled into one dense pixel, and the spark of newness faded a little under the glaring weight of what I had thought was filed away so discretely. I felt compromised and invaded. Since when is this stuff up for revision? I felt like someone else had the keyboard.

All of my cement is still wet.