A Man Without Ambition is Dead

She stared from inside her bathtub, frozen in passing time. It was the advent of her life and she was already bored. She was not, however, idle. She found pleasure in busyness, in interactions, in sensory perception. The water in the bath was lukewarm. Her father had installed a system to limit the temperature, so they all wouldn’t burn themselves. She missed the scalding water.

After exiting the bathtub, she toweled off and strode downstairs completely naked, to make canned soup. She put it on the stove and shook in gratuitous amounts of red pepper flakes. Now came the waiting time. Invigorated by her own cleanliness, she began to sing. Her voice bellowed through the empty house. She howled, naked and alone.

She felt the same sort of feeling that she did when she slipped out of her window in the morning-night. The barren streets were silent, and all she could hear was her heart beating faster as she sprinted down the street. She rejoiced in the relieving mixture of the day’s heat and the night’s air. Theoretically asleep in her bed, she didn’t exist. She lived.

Those remnants that reinforce my inadequacy,

They make me want to destroy,

To create-

To save face.

The adrenaline that charges my palms

Wills my hands to action.