[ Can you smell me ? Sense me? ]
A drag from knives on plates raise my hairs on end, feline flight or fight. Density settles like settiment. Internal concrete churns, like butter for toast. My food is burnt. With a thick and sad sound, leftovers thump to the bottom of the trashcan. Swallowed in a blue light, organic sounds of emails flood my inbox and the hollow filling of my lungs occupy me as the minutes pass. 11:29. A couple more minutes. Hours? My time is measured by the swells of hunger, grit of plaque on my back teeth. Hip bones press against my inner thighs, how odd my stance is. Hunched over spindled legs and open books- notebooks thrown open with half loved pages. A coffee spill on one or two.
[ The microwave is beeping, softly. So absorbed in shapes with no diameter, symbols with origins from the depths of watery tea leaves. You ended up unplugging it. This is the last time its mechanical bird song will cry to an empty room. ]
I'm trying to state myself clearly. To whom? Old friends in monolog, to a board of learned little boys- to eye me like grass fed steak? There were people before me. Like there will be after me. Aching joints almost flood my ears with noise, I lurch even farther upstairs to the cave I've made. 10 to 12 thousand different protein molecules aid me, aid me to tuck my hands under a heavy torso. Eras of evolutions, of model made DNA. Leaves me twisted like the helix on a carpet of synthetic comfort. Bent. Crooked fetus, mangled child, stunted adult. Cracking my bones in a melodious lullaby as I stumble into a soundless room to wander into another life.
[ This won't be the only time, nor is it the first. Get used to the rough hands of life on your naked body, hard and sturdy for your spine. ]
It's too early to open my eyes. Too late. You find it impossible to move now. The red sweet warmths of my mothers womb show themselves as the cover of my eyes, a heavy blackout curtain. Motes of dust in the air settle down on my cheeks, rising up from the deep shelter of sleep. In this hovering moment- there is someone standing over me. As quickly as I feel the breath on my cheeks, we exhale in a flow of air and my eyes flutter open to a beige wall and the corner where the imprint of my body stains the carpet. There is a wet and sick feeling in my stomach. Coiled. Black. I want it to slide out of me like a limp snake.
[Can you imagine living with the sun? You’d spend all day staring at the floor, wishing for something. Your mind will never learn how to breathe. ]
My phone hasn't shook the palm of my hand for a couple months. I remember the way I throttled its small body, threw it across the room whenever its gentle ring would echo. Poor hands reaching out, and now it's gone silent. I don't miss it. Not one bit. Moving to the bathroom like a sailor in vertigo, I hunch my sack of a body over the sink. My ribcage hovers on the ledge, bearing my weight. I heard on the radio recently that it is now officially the winter of our discontent. Is this what they meant? Curled up as the wind is pushed out of me, cold. I'm so tired of this. I know I'll stay here for a while, with a dark green mark along me- bruised and beautiful. The cuts on my fingers throb. Is this healing, or some bloody message to the things that feel out of my world?
[This type of tired never ends, hold on to it. It means your alive. ]
