A LITTLE DEATH

My newly straight hair smells like smoke tonight, as we walked from the warm light of the pseudo-home environments that are all coffee joints. Their smiles don't seem forced, but I'm having trouble responding as we drive from place to place. I undress for the shower and hope the water drains this restlessness from me.
This music fills my consciousness with separately meaningless words that circle around until I can't stand it. I want to want the attentions of the world. But I don't. Something in me longs to hole up alone with tea and a blanket and not come out until the world is brighter and shines on me. In the meantime I move as if in a cloud - moments of clarity but mostly in a fog.
Oh, I do not mean to burden you with my melancholy... Somehow here I feel tremendously lonely - cold, and cannot get warm. I use others' laughs as a gauge for my own - but when I cannot help it, it pours out of me and I cry. I cry as though there is something to be sad about. I feel nothing strongly. I hide it well.