(Poetry.)

[inveracity]

There’s a poem I want to write -
No, several.
They came to me last night, laying in bed,
This morning, in the shower, driving to school,
Sitting in English class trying to write (something else),
This afternoon, as I tutored a boy who didn’t bathe (often).
They crept up and they insinuated their way into -
My mind.
Slithering and crawling and working and twisting
Into the spaces between the moments,
The pauses between the seconds,
Those infestimial breaks that we take for given.
In that split, they came.
Settling down on top me with to smother with their weight,
Warm and downy, cocooning - but entrapping, confining;
Raining down from above to settle into my hair,
sink into my scalp, osmosis past my cranium;
Flying unbidden into my grasp as I reached for other words;
Curling up to my nostrils with a sickly sweet stench.
But now? Oh no. Not now.
Not now, in the moments that I’ve stolen,
Not now, as I have to go to bed,
Not now, as I sit at my desk.
Oh no. Not now.
Because this second, this moment, is too whole.