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.