meant to live/made to heal/pictures
late afternoon sunlight stripes my arms, the sheets, the dirty tiled floor (i really need to buy a broom), evidence of the past week's diet: oreos and peanut butter sandwiches and doritos, apple seeds, the wrapper from a nutrigrain bar. this weekend i will collect enough coins to wash clothes and i'll clean up the room the way i always do when this feeling comes over me.
because of course it's back again, this gaping emptiness in my chest and stomach, the crumbling cavernous walls shaking a little as piece after piece breaks free in ways i could never dream of doing to family and friends and falls endless toward..what? the bottom of me? is there one?
i am shallow, so there must be. i am superficial. materialistic, and my materials are plastic and rusted iron.
these longings are twisting their knotted fingers into my flesh and tugging hard and desperate, fighting for purchase on my inner walls and i stare past the pages of books i've read too many times to count (yet i still can't tell you what they're about) in search of another fix, another escape route. goddamn it i finished the book again, that wasn't supposed to happen and almost as soon as i noticed that i was on the last page my stomach began to snarl, my heart began racing and inside my skull s/he paces slow and steady and endless back and forth, occasionally getting a foot caught in the ruts and folded flesh of my brain.
i press my fingers as hard as i can against my hipbones to remind myself of what could be. i slip my fingers over and under warm slick flesh in the dark, agitating and angering sensitive spots until color sparks behind my lids and fever blooms bright under my skin, unfurling light like linen sheets blossoming just beneath the brown surface of me, beneath my armor, and my heart clamors loud and metallic in my chest until a curt whisper silences it again-- all this to remind myself of what could be.
my roommate's boyfriend is here. they stay on the other side of the partition, talking in quiet tones, and as usual i am searching for signs of love in the way she asks if he wants to eat on campus and his soft-spoken response that he isn't all that hungry. i can't find any, but a few minutes of silence pass and then i hear the telltale breathlessness of whispers and the soft slipping click of lips on lips and finally it comes, the soft burning flare from my stomach beaming up my throat and i am not quite sure whether this is jealousy or hunger because the clawing in my stomach could be either one, really.
it's hard, at nineteen, to hear what the operator at the switchboard is telling me, plugging in the wrong wires at the switchboard so that every signal is misinterpreted and messages come across garbled and confused like the inside of my head, all miscommunication mass communicated to a sea of waiting nerve endings left sparking and wet on the ground every night when i finally fall into the black space between awakenings which i have accepted as my equivalent of sleep.
they say goodbye and my response-- the sound of my voice-- startles me. i'm not sure i said anything at all, but i did, because i felt the breath escape my lips around the weak goodbye. another tangled wire falls and i can almost hear the sizzle as it strikes the others burning in the pit of my empty stomach.
i need to be rewired; are there electricians who could fix this sort of thing?
because of course it's back again, this gaping emptiness in my chest and stomach, the crumbling cavernous walls shaking a little as piece after piece breaks free in ways i could never dream of doing to family and friends and falls endless toward..what? the bottom of me? is there one?
i am shallow, so there must be. i am superficial. materialistic, and my materials are plastic and rusted iron.
these longings are twisting their knotted fingers into my flesh and tugging hard and desperate, fighting for purchase on my inner walls and i stare past the pages of books i've read too many times to count (yet i still can't tell you what they're about) in search of another fix, another escape route. goddamn it i finished the book again, that wasn't supposed to happen and almost as soon as i noticed that i was on the last page my stomach began to snarl, my heart began racing and inside my skull s/he paces slow and steady and endless back and forth, occasionally getting a foot caught in the ruts and folded flesh of my brain.
i press my fingers as hard as i can against my hipbones to remind myself of what could be. i slip my fingers over and under warm slick flesh in the dark, agitating and angering sensitive spots until color sparks behind my lids and fever blooms bright under my skin, unfurling light like linen sheets blossoming just beneath the brown surface of me, beneath my armor, and my heart clamors loud and metallic in my chest until a curt whisper silences it again-- all this to remind myself of what could be.
my roommate's boyfriend is here. they stay on the other side of the partition, talking in quiet tones, and as usual i am searching for signs of love in the way she asks if he wants to eat on campus and his soft-spoken response that he isn't all that hungry. i can't find any, but a few minutes of silence pass and then i hear the telltale breathlessness of whispers and the soft slipping click of lips on lips and finally it comes, the soft burning flare from my stomach beaming up my throat and i am not quite sure whether this is jealousy or hunger because the clawing in my stomach could be either one, really.
it's hard, at nineteen, to hear what the operator at the switchboard is telling me, plugging in the wrong wires at the switchboard so that every signal is misinterpreted and messages come across garbled and confused like the inside of my head, all miscommunication mass communicated to a sea of waiting nerve endings left sparking and wet on the ground every night when i finally fall into the black space between awakenings which i have accepted as my equivalent of sleep.
they say goodbye and my response-- the sound of my voice-- startles me. i'm not sure i said anything at all, but i did, because i felt the breath escape my lips around the weak goodbye. another tangled wire falls and i can almost hear the sizzle as it strikes the others burning in the pit of my empty stomach.
i need to be rewired; are there electricians who could fix this sort of thing?