too loud too loud too loud

nothing is alive. you clutch your throat and wrist but can’t find your pulse. the wind is blowing but nothing moves

you’re bleeding out in a field on a summer day, you lose consciousness as the sun sets.

the path is long and the forest is deep. you have a long way to go before you come out the other side– are you sure you want to leave? You could make a home here, you know.

make yourself beautiful or leave yourself plain– either way, to be seen is to suffer. embroider yourself and await the needle. accept the eyes that will rest on you like birds on a wire, comfortable for them and crawling for you. take up your skin and tan it lovely, soft, or leave it in its roughest state and feel fires of scorn scorch the ugliness you have not tucked away. write wrath in the mirror and wait for it to move you– your choices do not matter. you are. and there is no existence without perception, and no perception without pain. 

when I unravel it is like a cobweb collapsing under the weight of morning dew; pendulous morning stretches and each little mist catches my threads until I sag– and stretch– and break to white-waving strings flagging my surrender. I must wait till night to rework my web; I cannot weave under all these eyes.