the inside-outness of it all

this is a joy i am unequipped to handle.

but such a joy!
my legs go weak with it. 

 

how do i, myself, find my self in the face of the terror of this joy?

or, do i feel it too acutely?

what is it about, though?

i see an iris every time i blink and my fingers are too cold to type. 

there was snow this morning, you know. 
descent into the belly of the great beast.
you're sleeping still so you don't know. 
and the air is pregnant. 

only i can't tell with what.
whose mood is whose?
with which past do i have the luxury of sharing my time this time?

she slept and i was quiet so as to bathe in my own time. 
he slept even when i kicked him because he chose to keep and cuddle my time. 
it was never mine. 

and the late sun steals my mornings. if you could call it that. 
it tries to reach me but it can't quite. too much grey, thick between us. 
cold and light are different properties, the physicists would say.
they don't affect each other. 

kicking him does not affect the deflation of time either, yet it does. they do. 
don't tell me the space of time does not have properties. 
i do not accept your PhDs. 

there are more than five senses, you know. 
proprioception, the sense of your body in space. 
sense of balance, of temperature, of pain, of acceleration.
sense of time. 

my nerves are damaged. i can't sense pain properly. 
i feel a temperature that you do not, between ice cold and scalding hot
that is neither and both and liable to get me into trouble. 

time, time is the same. 
we are strange bedfellows. 
because space is time and time is space with which the physicists agree on a macro scale but down here where it is cold and you are sleeping and my fingers are cold i cannot feel time.

which is why i resort to stealing and kicking. 
it is a strange thing i cannot seem to own and it frightens me. 

i am frightened of the winter which feels long and dark. 
i cannot get the hang of tuesdays or the latter half of the month. 

i am time-blind and there is not a disability category for that. 
left to founder. 
left to apologise. 
left to fill the time-hole with fears and wants.

the sun is all i've got to keep gauge of the days and there is none here, there will be none here, there was none here, i think.
i'm trying to understand but it slips through in the dark.

in which it ends up somewhere where it didn't start

i wanted to vomit orange rainbows into the heavens to mix with the stars. 
i wanted so badly my fists shook.
put my face between my knees. 
something familiar. 

i haven't touched my face so much in weeks. 
grey soft sweater. 
always, hide my hands.

i cannot look at myself. it's all fallen down.

the tinnitus in my left ear is worse, won't stop.
it pulls me to the left, the devil's side.

i'm losing myself. 
again. 
or remembering, again, that i am already lost.
is that not more or less the same thing?
i'm getting rather bored of this. 

although, to be fair, it is a saturday. 
and there is barely a translucent sun.

i need to go to sleep again.
the sleeping princess, await the kiss.
but my true love's here so i guess that's not the answer. 
why did we ever think it would be?

in this tale the heroine searches her dreams for the potion
that will stop her body from disappearing. 

it's an impossible quest.
but they all are; they need to be. that's part of the formula.

how does she see if she's gashed her leg open or skinned her knee?

spoiler: heroine dies of unknown gangrene. 

moral? know who you are before you begin. 
that's one that challenges the old rote form.

what if who you think you are is the one vomiting rainbows?
beautiful and lonely and sad. 
her insides spill out but there aren't colors enough to fill them again. 
tears erase fat transparent lines down her cheeks.

she starts to forget her own name. pinches her arm to remember but it's not there.
classic fairytale twist. now she's got two quests, both as impossible.
and of course, time's running out. 

what does happen to your proprioception if you can't see your limbs?
do they float invisibly about? can you still touch your nose?
how long until you can't find your own self?

grey hands, please cover my face.

this heroine will not be rescued. 
this is not a children's film.

this heroine will die alone of crusted orange and rot green.

receptacle

there is too much of that in there. 
i cannot wait for you. 

it's an empty box unlocked and it has all of it, all of it, the ten thousand things
and it tries to eat me alive. 

please do not come. 
i have my own sword. 
they say build a shield but i am not one to approach these things cautiously. 

i feel it all
i feel you all
i feel all of you
i am not afraid anymore

i am full of lies. 

i am so very very afraid. 
might as well be a voodoo doll. 
stick me with ten thousand pins all over, so i feel the pain all over and up into the insides. 
kidneys, liver, pins slosh in my skull. 
the heart of course, but that goes without saying.
i don't blame you; i must admit it's got a nice squish for pins. 
cathartic red that stains your masculine fingers. 
maybe that will change you. 
you hope. 
i think not. 

i feel the age i'm not. 
you press your years against me
and your height
with your heels
and that optimal voice you will never, ever like

what will you have me do? climb inside your throat and stack up the cards again, again, 
again after each breath, each comment that causes collapse?

what would you have me do, when i can't fix you?

my heart is a fragile being too.  
it is prone to flutters, sudden attempts to escape which render the rest of me unholy. 

we all have our faults. 
we all carry our errors like the dead, dragging behind us. 

no. 
they are yours. 
i do not want your old names, your old lives. 
mine are enough. they are rowdy, they drain me, they are enough. 

curled up in this nebula

1.
pale promises of courage i give myself.
i can't eat without thought. 

i am distracted by your eyes, your skin, your hands. i think this is a good thing but i've been losing time again these days. 

ninety degrees is a far way to turn. 
i must see it differently. i must. 

she is a universe of exploding color of which snatches i can catch. 

she fills my insides with chalk-orange, only that's not because of her. 
that's what she brings out of me. 
i'm starting to understand what trust is. 

it's a language whose syntax is not explicit. i cannot glean this one in a semester. 
but it is not math; it is there. i can learn it. 

like everyone else. slow. arduously. so many mistakes.  

this is the one that's worth learning in the end, i imagine. 
there is no language if there is no one with whom to communicate. 
it becomes useless, confusing. 

2.
the scratch of the new carpet feels fine against my cheek. 
i need to feel something that i can touch. 

abstract language: not mastered till high school. 
abstract feelings. not yet mastered. 

they swirl about in that continuum of spacetime in which i am always lost. 
stars explode and are born amidst red hydrogen light. 
i turn eddies there, red drifts through my fingers, i am not yet formed. 
feelings not fully developed. 
she needs to incubate longer. please leave her in. 

but they can't, it's time, it's time to go and make due with what there is.
she will stumble on and learn the rest. 

she will understand, at least, how to feel the fibers of the carpet and see home. 

gagged

i haven't. 
i can't.
words are crawling away from my hands before i can catch them.
i can't catch them. 
not words. they're not words. 
what's that other thing called?
roiling swirling magma of colors of um, feelings? is that it?
i have too much fundamental confusion. 

we live under a magnifying glass here, me and my magma. i am that leaky kind of volcano. 
the one you watch closely in case of explosion. 

my face is being stabbed over and over so that is not helping.
murky thoughts. 
i haven't words. or they're not the right ones. 
aphasia of the both kinds. 

i'm afraid i'll vomit tea again if i can't vomit words. 
but i can't find them. 
just this kettle cavity of boil, boil, toil and trouble. 
certainly we're waiting to see about that. 

words? 

i can't understand if i can't write
but i guess i can't write if there's a fundamental inability to understand. 
need a vulcanologist. explain to me lava. explain how to stop up the cracks. explain how to put the earth to sleep. 
and a poet to find my words. 
they're hiding and i know it because i can feel them, i just can't grasp.
they call it groping. that would be dysarthria, to continue the co-morbidities. 

maybe it's a visual field cut. 
maybe they're just right over there, if i turn my head. 
if it's left side neglect, that's the end. imagine the clock hands. i will see but never recognize. 
i will be lost. 

i don't think physics is helping here

i am afraid of falling off the earth. i am afraid of all the atmospheres pressing down, holding me in this tenuous balance.

that and spinning are all that's keeping me from the lies of the stars. 

i always thought drowning would be peaceful, but they say it's not. 
i always imagined space full of sunlight, but i hear it's not. 

i was going to put some metaphor here about pupils, but it's not working out. i can't think of another one. my head is empty that way. 

i imagine that space is full of time. twisting and smothering. enough until it has no meaning. 


strangely, this is also how i experience evenings. suffocating and endless. i'm drowning in my own space. it's only seven. the voice pops up in my head, sleep yet? and i have to tell it no. again. 


really, i've nothing to say. 
or maybe i've too much to say and it's all getting jammed and it feels like nothing. 

i feel spacious inside. dark and empty and cheated because forever, i've been promised the heavens. 

they say that stars are made of gas. which is just a fancy way of saying nothing. 

if only my insides had such swirls of color. 
if only my insides were so vast.
i imagine caverns pregnant with light. swirls of words.
a star nursery. where the young ones are kept. 

except i've heard it's dark in there. and smells of rot. there is no space. but there is time in there, isn't there? 
my organs seem to understand time. they seem to stop working if i forget to eat. they feel better if i dance. they do not allow me to do both. 

how can i be empty and stuffed full of slippery rot all at once? 
there's two worlds colliding.
something in my head is breaking off. it can't contain the impact. 
which is more or less how we got our moon. 

which brings me back to starlight. 
which, in truth, is white and cold. 

so, there's that. 
can't really think of anything else. 

on the non-linearity of time

i am trying to clean the clutter of you out of my house. this is your city. how do i know what to recycle? the bin isn't even blue. 

i don't understand a lot of things. 

i am trying to keep on not understanding so i do not stay here. as if homesickness wasn't enough. 

the four miles between us is not 2600 but i am doing my damndest to convince myself. it does not help that you do my laundry on saturdays. 

my clothes come back smelling like your basement. 

once i got your underwear. 


the membrane between times is thin here; past and present, present past, present perfect progressive and future perfect progressive combining, i will have am being trapped here. as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. 

amen. 


do you remember the beaches of normandy, where the time membrane, too, was thin? ghosts of soldiers, my feet in their mud. their fear and mine. i could touch them. 


here it ripples with the river. the bridge is a mass of earthworms you find under a rock that go ten thousand ways. it is a beautiful feat of architecture. so much connexion. but you know, if you take the wrong exit, you're essentially fucked. four miles before you can turn around. too bad the way is etched into all my tenses.

i'm terrified i'll end up at yours by mistake. a wayward damning daydream. belly up. 

door-walker

yes, prod at me with your toe. i remember. what is a door, anyway?  

old house, long-lost skeleton keys, now just sad beautifully framed holes in the wood. 

that one lock, it did work. i didn't even know what that meant.  

ten years later, different hands, different voice, répète encore.

you'd think for all those doors i open i'd understand the meaning of locks. 

it's exquisitely painful being conscious today. stabbing behind the eyebrows. lethargy of the limbs. slack-jawed staring past the cars driving past, brain lost in the tumbling past. i see in shades of grey and brown. not sure if it was worth the pancakes. they were so good, though.

i'm not ten. i'm not twelve. i'm not fourteen, fighting back. i am how old and this shouldn't happen. i shouldn't feel this. i shouldn't feel. you didn't. i shouldn't. 

can i get a do-over?

i could've been prepared. pushed your face out of the doorway. given a less flimsy excuse. 

i'm afraid of the sound of the click of the lock, not of me but you hearing it, painful rejection spasming through your insides. fifteen years later, still. still. i can't do it, i can't lock you out. 

having found the off switch to my brain, i am now concerned that is does not, in fact, turn all systems off

caught in the stillness. i believe my heart is still beating. certainly it hurt when the mirror fell on my head yesterday. 

mother's day is tomorrow. i've been plotting out the boundaries. for your sake and mine. let's just talk about tulips and my new phone and the rain. my brain physically hurts to reach for depth. blame it on the mirrored semi-concussion, if you will, which you will.

i will hold my silence.

i will blank out your circle-maze speech because i cannot hope to follow.

everything will be loud in my ears. they're picking up too much static these days to deal with your problems. 

i'm brain-numb and brain-pained all at once.


your presence is humbly requested at brunch tomorrow.
we would be delighted at your company.
mimosas and french toast will be served in your honor.
cordially yours,
k.

donut eyes

i'm feeling a bit glazed over these days. maybe it's the sun and its magnificent appearance, maybe i'm not eating quite enough. 

 

but that's the point, though, isn't it?

there is you and there is me. i'm not sure if there's actually anyone else.

little demon bubbles up until i can exorcise him on to paper. 
you say, what about without the demon? how does it happen then?

but then there is no need for exorcisms. there is no devil to cast out. 

i suppose you could say the demon gives me the words. 

it's a tenuous balance. 

i'm going to retch. 

i really can't get the hang of thursdays. being awake is acutely painful. can't sleep without the demon out. 

why can't i explain the shadows behind my eyes?

the only safe place is inside a myth. predictable outcome. demon made flesh. 

we fight to the death. 

but you do not live ephemerally inside my skull. we know who slays whom. the rules are clear. 

we know who is dead. 
we can touch each other's blood. 

i see how i need you. you need me. i need you. 
or else there is no story here. and both of us are dead. we are nothing, we are nothing, we are dead. 

in general i'm against verticality

i feel the weight of ten thousand atmospheres. trying to rise my chest. i don't understand why others don't feel it. they seem to breathe without crushing. 

am i singular in that i have problems with gravity?

my limbs stick to the earth. supine in the grass. ants can crawl on me i can't move. just feed me raspberries and let me look up at the trees. 


the cat sleeps with his head shoved into the corner of his box. 

i understand the sentiment. 

do we all avoid the world in different ways?

am i the only one with significant problems with gravity, inertia?

physics made an exception for me. have the gravity of a thousand jupiters, it said. only newton's 1st for you. let's see what happens. 

what happens is nothing. which is the only thing that can happen. 

was that your hypothesis?

what a dull experiment. 

lab rat. 

i'm white as one here. i'm white as death. exsanguination. maybe i haven't enough blood to stand up in this gravity. the dizziness, anyway, is a certain. 

white sun, white rat, white skin. 

the world is losing its color. i only see green in the rain anymore. conversion color blindness disorder. probably not a thing. 

my lower eyelids are heavy now. face will slide off soon. maybe it will take its pain with it. 

i keep wanting to take off my face. pain and all. set it aside. like the classic android reveal, only i suppose there's a skull underneath there, not machinery. or they would've fixed me decades ago. 

do you think the gravity will pull me down through the bed through the floor into the core of the earth? it's made partly of nickel, i hear. maybe i'll see magma in its rightful color, maybe then.

it's too late to say don't touch the paintings, please

it's an under-the-duvet kind of day thanks to you, dear m. 
there's no explanation for the amount of confusion you shoved into me. 

i was only very small, after all. and then i was bigger. and further bigger
and no less confused. 

one eye sees the trees, one eye sees cement. i wear a prism now. wish there were one for my brain,
the parasite you let crawl into my ear once 

it eats synapses. it sucks up blood. 
fat leech in my brain. 

it shits confusion. 

your own perspective is inside out so i suppose
i really shouldn't be surprised
and his, so insular

oh, together you're quite a pair.

it's enough to spin a brain to chaos. 
should've stuck with the trepanning and let the brain drip out my nose
and have done with it. sent me on my way with the Book of the Dead
and my heart in a jar,
my guts in another. 

let me die in the desert, oh please, oh please
i want to see the sky and the sand
each eye surprised at different types of brightness

i've never known here under your swirling, muddled meddled tar pitched world

necrosis of the heart

everything tastes too much. 

i cannot hold myself upright. 

tremors under my skin, in my jaw, old hands. i am paler than i have ever been. white ghost. disappearing into bones

i don't necessarily want. 

it's just inertia. it's just this white weak sun. i'm wilting as the croci pop up vivid purple in the rain.

but the world is still dead. 

it's dead in my head. it's soft and still and quiet in here.

for once. 

is that why the inertia keeps the food from my lips, overwhelms the sense of smell, cuts off access to--
well, everything?

i want to be home. yellow sun-soaked eyes.
skin the color of life. of movement and thoughts and freedom. 

i am, essentially, caught in the nexus of my distress. i suppose i have given up the thrashing, flopped over as if dead. maybe i won't be dead that way.

but

it's true that i don't breathe here. 

am i dead and not know it? is it that my body is slowly coming to terms with already being dead? is Death, the Grand End of Things, far different from what we thought? 

a slow cool down into nothingness, a hand wrapped around your heart, squeezing it slowly away?

necrosis of the hands, next? blackness, scooching upward
until i cannot feel where my body ends 
and the universe begins?

osmosis

that hug is a viper, it bites and it feeds
it comes four times in fifteen minutes and i have to push out to let you let me go

do you still think i'm yours? 
after all this time, all this growing up i had to do
to separate from you

conversion touch disorder, could i not have had that with a poison frog skin
bright colors to warn you

would that have worked if i knew what you do?

you don't know you don't know you don't know what you do
it all comes so naturally to you

my skin is not bright but still you find me
i turn to paper
i fold into a cardboard box

please, will you, just throw me away?

you made that dark thing in me that roils around, 
those brain blocks that compartmental box

you taught me to make them with tender viper hands
you aren't made of bright colors, 
i wasn't to know
you smiled and laughed and i said more mummy more
and so there was more 
we had fun
i loved you tremendously, i did, i did

past tense there, Brown's morpheme Stage IV
i learned it by three but not when to use it,
not where it applied,

not that your type of viper has teeth, 
it's only when prey pulls away

atlas

my mind is haunting me 

it's leaking out in the tremors in my hands. i can't hold the tea that calms me.

i'm pregnant with ghosts.

my head is not big enough, my fingers turn black. i can't carry this fullness any more. 

i don't even know what's in there. the ghosts are sworn to silence. 

that doesn't mean they can't terrify because they do, they do

and my body is wracked with fear
these tremors, these dents in my head,
stabbing face,
what are you?

am i dying?

would you kindly let me know?

i am too full i am too full, please, a shunt for the skull? let the everything drip out. i've always been in favor of trepanning. twist up those ghosts a bit, i want them to squirm.

do you know, i wish for cobwebs? i wish for cotton. 

help me carry it, 
portage to the next river, and no i don't know how many miles or how much is muck

just, please? 

and no, i don't know the way. that's your job, isn't it? making the torches,
disengaging the ghosts?

i think i'll go walk the dog in the sun now. 
you can't see ghosts in daylight, right?

what lies they do tell.