i. I am my own worst nigthmare. A glass drops into my hand and my palm shatters- conclusion: I'm too fragile for all this. I try to bite the rust from beneath my fingernails- conclusion: there are endless walls and walks and rides and the damage collects, and I know it, I'm just no good at fixing it. A book opens and closes, another on top of it, a hand is raised expectantly in a school room- conclusion: I am a question, unsure of being answered. A phone rings and rings, hands shake, the blinds close- conclusion: I am afraid, I would prefer to be invisible. So why is it that it means so much to me that I am remembered, noticed, loved? I blush, I hide, I need, I rattle. I am a nightmare.
ii. Pits of hunger feel better again. I'm a fool and buckling and I know it. I used to be able to stop it. Where did the strength go? Where did the rain go? Why don't I talk anymore? I would give anything to go back and start over, to when I could be and wanted to be heard, and I didn't see a tombstone standing in my doorway, and I didn't see myself from above and see an eyesore.
iii. Somewhere, sometime, someone said I was going to be okay. I didn't believe them before. I believe it now. I am still porcelain and not stone. I am still rust but not decay. I suddenly finding it strange to be myself.
iv. Possible diagnoses (not yet invented): disenchanted brain; history not one's own (delusion); abandoning of flight; undemanding tightness; birdbath stomach ache; translucence; corner cowaredice; blind trust; a healing through scar tissue; sanity through sentene structure; a reckoning.
v. I suppose this is half-imagined. Like imagining choosing songs to whistle in the mounains or to sing on the street, like a radio looping in your bain. Like looking straight into an eclipse. Meeting a cheerful ghost at a rundown factory. Leaving something special behind when you go.
vi. The walls sweat anxiously and you whistle softly to me. There's nothing but nostalgia in the clouds and a heart thrumming in my mouth- mine or yours? Why did I never have the right words to say? I tried to write them. I tried to be a dream more than a nightmare, but maybe self-knowledge at the end of it is better than being just a phantom of regret.
vii. Someday- if I have the time- all of this will get the better of me and that will be the end, and I'll go to a place beyond this with books and bathtubs or just waste. Or it won't get the better of me and I will shrug it all away, or else I'll do anything at all- with no exceptions, besides having to remain alone forever- to fit the puzzle pieces back together. Loss breaks me apart in a way I can't articulate. I'm not finished. I'm not crazy. I do love.
viii. I don't know where I am going, or who I am, or what I can do. You have to tell me. I'm just made up of mirrors. I've known dead-ends and disasters but I'm still here. I shouldn't be but I am. War should never be happening, but i is, always will. I don't deserve to be happening here, but I am. Isn't that some kind of evidence that magic really exists?
