Let's take it from the top

(from sometime in 2024)

I feel like I could never want food again, and I want to feed me a bowl of hot Campbell’s soup. I have pain in my head and i don’t know where sensations are in my own body. I want to shower until I squeak and I want to never be clean again.

I’m cold. I’m always cold. I’ve never been cold. I’m more alone than any creature in the universe, but the whole world is filled with home.

Everyone is a potential friend. Anyone could kill me. I’m tiny and weak and I’m grown and strong and I’m afraid of large men and I know I can successfully maim and escape a man four times my size.

I want to feel better, and I don’t want to take meds. I tell myself my body deserves care, then I fight tooth and nail to not care for it. I stock food and don’t want to eat it. I do therapy and I don’t want to speak it. I respect the boundaries of every cat and I can’t seem to notice my own. I don’t feel enough when I breathe. I feel too much when I write. I can’t feel my body and I still use it with fine precision.

I can’t write poetry but it stabs me in the chest. I go out at night and feel safest, and I spent most of my life terrified of the dark. Running makes me feel like I’ll die and running is the only thing that tethers me late at night. I hate an old gift, then cradle it in my hands.

I don’t know what to do with any of this at all except keep weaving one strand at a time and hope it adds up.