Dear Mrs. Hyde

I'm not a poet anymore, but for a while I tried (I really tried). Here's one I wrote back when I was finding my rhythm:

I get drunk a lot. It's an addiction, but the comforting kind of addiction, the playful kind.

I get drunk a lot, and sometimes after heavy nights of drinking, I wake up and find that an imposter has been imposting me. She's exactly like me in every way- she looks like me, she talks sort of like me, she dances- actually, her dancing's pretty bad but no one has the courage to tell her.

I get drunk a lot, and Drunk Me's in a pickle, she's the Mrs. Hyde to my Dr. Jekyll. If I were Joey, she'd be Chandler, if I were a list, she would be my Schindler.

I get drunk a lot, and after drinking that magic potion, Mrs. Hyde takes over and I have no memory of the kind of revelry she gets up to...but she's a considerate woman, Mrs. Hyde, and she leaves me notes in the second drawer of my desk-

These letters, like something out of Jane Austen, like a substitute writing feedback for when the teacher is absent~

“Jenny did a bad thing yesterday”

But Mrs. Hyde doesn't write simple notes~

“Emmy called, she wants to return the slow cooker”

“Out of eggs, milk, flour and butter. Cooking class enrollment brochure pinned to the fridge. Also, there's vomit in the bathroom”

“You watched The Jane Austen Book Club. It was okay”

No. To avoid detection from friends, flatmates, and Mr. Burglar who might sneak into the house between the time I pass out with a bottle of Jim Beam Rye, and the time I wake up with a Biblical hangover and want to die, who might read Mrs. Hyde's notes while he debates whether or not it's worth stealing my piece-of-crap computer.

So, Mr. Burglar, I'll confess that Mrs. Hyde uses the only code she knows- it may sound like crazy talk, but that's good because it means that she's speaking my language. She does this so that friends, flatmates, and Mr. Burglar won't discover the errs and poor decisions she's done; all the furniture she's broken, all the keys and clothes she has lost; all the video game bosses she has defeated, all of our friendships that she has completed.

Friends, flatmates, and Mr. Burglar will never find out through Hyde's notes- they'll find out through Facebook like everybody else.

If I wake up and read, on stained yellow pad paper, in serial killer handwriting~

“There's fire in Narnia” I know my smokes are in the closet.

“The TARDIS is waiting” I have to make a doctor's appointment.

“The Hat is not hungry” I have already fed the cat.

These are rather tame notes, perhaps just to keep us in practise, but more likely, so she can just screw with me.

But sometimes~

“You talked to your chromosomes” I called two of my exes.

“Cosby and Murray are broke” my bills haven't been paid.

“Mommy's staying at the Bates Motel” mom's gone psycho.

“Taylor Swift wants to talk to you” Jess and I have broken up.

I get drunk a lot, and Mrs. Hyde leaves me these coded letters in the drawer which sits second in my desk, but in the drawer that sits third in my desk sleep a stack of unopened, uncracked mail. This is mail that cannot be returned to sender. There are notes which Mrs. Hyde has written in such a way that the enigma code breakers of the second world war would have been proud of. Dan Brown, take cover because these notes are written as if by two English literature nerds who have been trying to out-obscure-reference each other. Some of them go a little something like this~

“His ukulele's full of beer and he's kept quiet”

“Something blue is still on the cards”

“All the rivers are second-hand”

These notes represent the perfect miscommunication between Mrs. Hyde and me. She has done something that she can never tell me, and I may one day find what she has done, but will never know that she wrote to tell me about it. I keep these letters anyway, these deeds which may only live on through these notes, these clues of flotsam and jetsam that I do not remember, and they remind me~

I get drunk a lot