in the afternoon i see that we’re the last to leave and stumble again, on the cusp of dying and relief and i swallow and stop myself. i’ll feel this way tomorrow, and the day after that. the synapse between us is gentle and narrow but i feel un-contained by the negative space and politely look away. 

i’ll feel like this tomorrow, and the day after that. in the night, i lay on my back, perfectly supine and succumbed to the white plaster ceiling again, its porous sound barrier and threatening imposition again. this room is too big and folds me into nothing space. i suspend in it and crave until i starve. violent is craving, is slow-onset, is a disease of the mind and stomach. i suspend in space and wait for the swarm of footsteps, approaching my throat from my navel the fifth time this week. 

they are small and many and stop at the peak of my chest on each breath today, and i’ll feel them tomorrow, the day after that. i stay still to let them travel safe and self-determine, where they want to be on me, what they need to do with me. 

they are small and many, a nation that has long searched un-bounded across my skin and broken crevices. 

they are small but they are restless. they seek exclusive mandate over some part of me, any:

my stomach, where they will dig into the small knot of skin, still tight with old sweat and gray dirt from the playground outside my first family home, where i looked for you through sun spots and rainbow fog but pretended i wasn’t doing that. they could part the skin there, down deep. they could tumble against hollow acid walls and look for what is missing, what is churning, what starves and swallows, and maybe then they’d help me out.

my right wrist, the red-raw and too-protruded knob on its side that burns against the desk when i’ve tried to write to you, it begs me to slow down and think. they could break the skin a little more at its fraying seams, strip and peel me back. they slip under like an infection. maybe they would hold me to some standard of civilized, and i wouldn’t have to feel this way.

my baby hairs, which i’m tangling and detangling with uncut fingernails, threaded with the toil and agony of all this time, all these years. they could sift through it all and drill somehow through the dense bone, they could parse through my rotting mind and sever it from me, berate sense into the thoughts. maybe then this will all be over and we’ll both die happy and apart. maybe we can both get what we deserve.

my sternum, where they could sail each inhale and press down, and hear the exhale scrape through soft tissue and relish in how long i’m taking to do this. the tempo of a tired beat as it stumbles from one count to the next. it could be fun for them to slide around in the valves of my heart, warm and wet and touch-starved and pain-starved. or they could liberate me, oh they could

is this uncomfortable? is this okay? it’s so hard to be brave when i know nothing and feel everything, feel  everything until the extinction of time. so i pull the blanket to my nose and i let them walk over me. i’ll feel them against me today, tomorrow.

for now, they crawl un-contained and alien and sovereign over every part of me, every small plot in the foot of a thousand footsteps, they’ll fight over what to make me do, and i’ll feel this way tomorrow too. i’ll think about you then too. for now, they are citizen to my pockmarked skin and vain eyes, through right of both soil and blood. for now, they could run rampant everywhere, maybe and especially

my mouth—break quick and quiet into the pockets of my worst realizations. my spoiled longings, hold them flush beneath my tongue and grind them down against dull milk teeth. cut through the thinnest part of cheek flesh and let them out, let them heal in open air. entangle my vocal chords until they weave a net. undo them; contract, relax, repeat until this is over. help me refrain, help me hold back, then help me release. do this for me, please.

you’ll know then: oh, this is that other thing i meant to say. and, all my love and all my lucky stars squeezed in my palms as i hurry toward, i hope you know one day. 

but until they decide for me, i’ll run away from you. 

in this undecided territory between us, i’ll keep running.