Spent

My curtains are twitching like crickets. Restlessness in the face of a relentless life. Skin stays still whilst my organs squirm. That wet, claustrophobic heat that is part of the integral design. There’s barely room for my heart, let alone anything else. I am literally bursting at the seams, that’s why I’m wearing more clothes today, to keep all of me in. If this gets out, I don’t know if there’ll be anything left of me. Why am I so keen to remain, despite the majority of my thoughts taking the other side? This cowardice is actually bravery. Like a mewling infant, unaware but with its own concerns, there is much more invested in me than I care to fully recognise. If the whole world is against me, it could be for me, too. If I am against me, I could be for me too.

Where is this strength? Bones break, their middles are marrow anyhow. Metal buckles, my house is blown down. Perhaps I am like lightning, a jagged scar in an infinite dark, there then gone – but the mark is left behind your eye for a smarting second more because you had to look. This one verse, ever expanding & contracting in my mind. This one mind expanding & contracting in my verse.

I am back behind the desk, there for show, listening to fingers on keys, each tap a grain of rice falling on a marble floor. Echoing round the foyer are foreign mutterings as coherent as those of a lover asleep – I am not fluent in love but I get by. To be honest, I’m overhearing rather than listening; my senses have no purpose currently & have drifted like snow, appearing to have substance but falling through as soon as I try to support myself.

Existence is exhausting.

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