The doctor said I should cut down to twenty milligrams of living a day, but I swallow down
bottles of it like Coca-Cola, and it rots my teeth and fizzes my tongue and I taste it sweet on the
insides of my cheeks in between sips.

The doctor said I should eat more static, wash it down with a glass of white noise after every
meal, but I slice sinfully red tomatoes and eat every acidic bite. I carve one slice of cheese and I
make it decadent, like the French do, roll chain store Havarti on my tongue like it’s a hunk of brie
in Paris.

I steal a block of dizzy promenade from an empty back room, so every blade of grass counts,
every weather-worn tile on the neighbor’s roof, every squirrel that dodges a car just in the nick of
time. If I only get fifty paces, I will savor each one like a suck on a lollipop. Each one succulent
with white sky and cold, wet wind.

And if I’m to finish off the night the way it’s been prescribed, too bad, too bad, I’ll still swallow
the bitter medicines, but I’m throwing out the sugar-shallow controls, I’m cooking my potato in as
much oil as I like, I’m staying up until 1:00 a.m. and dipping my fingers in caramel before bed.

I’m alive and sick and I’ve choked on the static, I’ll coat my teeth in sugar and I’ll fill my body
until it bursts like a roasted tomato, split down the middle with its zesty heart oozing red and
red-hot, and I’ll say what a mercy it is, this ruinous living.