When I was a freshman in high school and stealing my parents’ pot from the flour sifter fitted perfectly into the top of a yogurt lid next to the handle of Usher’s Scotch on the top shelf of the eggshell yellow kitchen cabinet I would shut myself in the dark of my room and get high and sit in front of the little four inch screen of my stepfather’s travel television and burn candles and watch wax melt and drip and run and congeal continuously over and over on top of the landscapes that had been created the night before, god knows what I was doing with and to my brain.

I would lie in bed and close my eyes and listen to the ringing in my ears. The ringing sounded like thousands of balls bouncing off each other falling through space in all directions. The ringing would oscillate and the size and material of the balls would change with the sound but they were never more than one kind of ball at a time. All kinds of balls: medicine balls, ping-pong balls, basketballs, those red rubber balls from gym class and a number of other balls that don’t exist.