I keep writing apologies, elegies, static frames with my palms facing up or framing a face without touching it. The same songs spin in loops on the intangible record player lodged in my brain. Then there are the poems, the verses. They are not the same. I sometimes wish they would return on a loop like a record on repeat so that I could put pen to paper, but my thoughts are racing ahead of me, riding gusts of wind or whistling through leaves or between the wheels of cars without having to pause for breath, because they don't run on lungfuls of air. I sleep when I can, as well as I can, but I seem to have taken up sleepwalking. That's the only explanation for why I was jolted awake between my bedroom and kitchen with my forehead slammed against a jutting wall. I rarely dream but when I do I am always either running away from or running towards something, or someone, frantically, and it's a terrifying threat that I'm escaping. I'm always cold even though it is summer. I was very lonely, but this is beginning to change. Among my apologies and lists of wrongdoings, I also keep writing litanies of questions to myself I still struggle to answer. I have stopped writing excuses but they still linger in my mind like an itch.
Today I trailed my fingertips against the walls in my hallway so that I had something to focus on. I sleep with my cardigan and eyeliner on. I can't ever seem to get enough air when I breathe and I am terrified of seeing my reflection in a mirror or shop window. I still want to disappear but I guess I've become accustomed to living that way, and now I'm trying to make it work regardless.
