how many hyphens can i shove in? there are more and more mornings like this: waking up before my alarm goes off—alarm(ing) ... is a word that sticks and hurts, i discovered, when a friend asks you if his back needs waxing—poking out from under new cotton jersey sheets and next to a cheetah-print pillow, looking at my not-bare-anymore walls finally, my dick sore from beating off a lot lately but once again hard as a rock top-of-the-morning-to-ya, muscles right above my armpits and the center of my back sore from the gym. a friend once recognized depression in a friend of hers when the friend started sleeping all the time, and i wonder if i caught some mutant strain of this that gets me up at 8:30 on a sunday.
i get to church about fifteen minutes early, and my new deacon and one of the priests are practicing tasks. the priest is speaking really quietly, but the microphone is over his head and flecks of vocal sound bounce around. as the service is ending, a homeless woman is weeping loud enough that it mixes with the sound of the organist's postlude.