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.   

evisceration

my brain fell out of words. wait, words fell out of my brain. grad school time is not in alignment with your time. i have reached a whole new level of numbness. 

nothing worth it. sleep, my beloved, has come to me regularly.

i am encapsulated in this glacial plane of time. i will miss your birthday your anniversary baby cousins being born, it just doesn't happen in here because we are stuffed fat with phonemes and clusters and blends. it is quite quiet in here, though. my globe is made of thick glass, so the light will shine in. 

brain weighs more than the body. mostly, i've given up spelling. really, correct spelling was never a thing until some tightwad decided to regulate it. my fingers type things without consultation from brain. usually brain is informed on these things but brain is an absent parent right now, with more important things to do, apparently. 

body is yelling; it is weak. face hurts. stuffed-down creative bit of brain is pregnant with adjectives, metaphors, life. beginning to atrophy. i have to search for you. you are a sad timid creature now. they are all yelling and yelling but absent parent chooses selective deafness. 

i can't live like this.
not here. 
not in this place of horrors where angry ghosts are real and do my laundry on saturdays.

(no) children were harmed in the making of this motion picture

oh, Mother.

let's define 'wrong' by the number of scars
the number of stars--
wouldn't you touch the constellations if you could?

inky black soft velvet sky. places of brilliance. trace them into patterns you find. such softness. 
connect the dots, each pattern a private picture, each brilliance a burst of joy.

there are, you know, reasons we can't touch. 

you don't yet know when you're young, when it's fun

oh, oh mum,

what have you done?

mind killer

the daemon sits on my chest and steals my breath. this was much feared through history, you know. now they call it sleep paralysis and that is not what is happening here. 

the panic is unnameable. maybe i will call it terror. the big black midnight blue-swirling storm ripping away at bits of me, inside to out. inside i cracked at that place. i didn't tell you this morning because self-shards can't talk. can only make my hands shake and blood race. not to the lungs, i guess. daemon's got that covered.

the terror is not real. i know this. you hold my hand but i can't feel it. daemon steals sensation too. are my fingertips terror-blue? is that my voice, calling out?

i recognise nothing. 

ok the pills yes please, i know we said no but my daemon's grown, leapt into the shattering shards of my self with his tongue hanging out between the fangs with excitement. a small boy with a carton of lego. 

listen to the rain on the streets. can you hear it? the puddles, they panic to be sluiced through. then the nothing without cars. in that silence the rain and i, we can be still. raise my ribcage. release the ripples.
but it's a busy street. not enough time for breaths.

i do not think pain would be the worst of dying. so many are afraid of that. terror is the mind-killer. 

paralysis. 

not fight or flight. freeze. will the arteries burst on their own or must i cut them open to fight back?

i want the pills now. i don't care please. i cannot even move enough to cry.

fury

a pregnant

impregnable

need desperation

fury to write

a baby announces itself with its mother's first words, a need to push

inescapable biological physical sensation of the body

a sheen of sweat

that bittersweet bite of an orange

bits of tv shows in the periphery as i scratch

the dog who rolls into my clenching fingers

there is no baby

phantom pregnancy psychogenic headaches

prednisone torodol reglan triptans

more and more and more

and, i need to push

i need to not feel

psychogenic

psychosomatic

psycho, psycho, psycho

even the cat stares me down. his eyes were yellow once. now they singe.

fury a fury

sweaty sheen

there's nothing to write i'm nothing good 

prednisone, is it you who infect my mind?

should we take out those pills

and the white pills

and the white and blue capsules

and the blue triangles

and the smooth white ones, two sizes

so cute, the little one

and the round blue ones, or green, depending

and the yellow capsules rule my day, where are the hours? three times a day. tick tick tick. 

what if we take them all away?

what if the blood orange drips red on my white dress

and under my fingernails?

push, push

keep pushing, phantom, bloody fetus ghost,

welcome to this family, small corpse, little nothing

don't bother that you have no belly button, you'll be safe!

there will be no blood from you!

welcome, do, do come in

while i write nonsensical words

on the typewriter

clack slack tick tock pills time for the pills

with my slick sweat sheen and the blood on my fingers

and your face, your face in my throat pushing out

illusion

dinner is waiting. i can’t eat it. it’s all falling apart. i thought i got all my pieces glued together. glue wasn’t dry, i guess. 

i don’t know what i feel i don’t know how to feel there’s too much to feel there’s too many reasons why. 

i think i thought i was running away from myself again. 

o, that old romantic notion. 

i didn’t make it. i never do. i got here and ran smack into an older version of myself. this is why i never go back. 

am i any better than when i started? how is this not that again? 

i did so much work. 

i did so much work. 

i was becoming a person. i was a person. 

my head’s gone dark again. 

it’s also a tuesday. 

i’m just back where i started. backed into a corner. 

the same corner. i'm done with this corner. i'm bored with this corner. can i face a different wall, please?

something not so covered in blood and snot and sick. 

headache

i write now before the brain descends into chaos. already i can feel it behind my eyes, the hijacking.
rendering me inoperable.

boredom of a kind you don't know. you can't know. 

boredom of want. 
boredom of can't. 
boredom of boredom. 
boredom and pain and confusion and fear. 

how long does the river run? are there beavers here, tangles of trees and mud to block the way, bank to bank? are there dams, to stop it? am i in a tributary a pond a lake?

dams, please stop the rapids. 

stones against my skull. lungs breathe in water. people call to me i can't respond.

leave me alone. face the rapids on my own.   

i am busy. do not make me responsible for your pity.