Breakdowns taste like salt and rainbows. They smell like regret spiked with fresh babies. They ride numerous coffee-circle stains and horses made out of cigarette smoke. They sleep in the creases of your T-shirt.

When mine woke up, it took me fifteen hours to tell the world I was ready to climb back onstage.

Breakdowns crack my rear view mirror as I struggle to accept that I cannot drive home tonight.

Breakdowns take me back to a sad empty flat and somebody else’s bed. They take off my clothes and they cradle my head on the pillow and they lie, they say I never need to wake.

Breakdowns open my eyes so wide I could scream
and then just like that, they’re sealed shut and blinking means learning.

It’s been a bad week.

I found my way home when the sun came up, and I was glad. Even if it meant returning to no bedroom, even if it meant returning to deliver the one I love most to strange antiseptic perfumed people.

I was glad even it meant not having a single bloody clear thought from then to now, to right now, when I’m trying to get it down in words but they ride away.
They ride on the smoky horses with infinitely curled tails and they vanish back under my skin. I stop seeing grotesque things in the morning’s caffeine circles. They’re just stains now, so I wipe them and call it clean.

Here I am, feet onstage. I can play along again and I will.
I will.