You're cold, or maybe you just miss the sun.

You fall feeling like it's just begun/So far keeping it together's been enough.

This morning I listened to the rain like I could drown beneath your skylight. The autumnal season always feels stretched and taut, like everything is moving too fast or not at all. I feel like an act of recoil, all elbows and displaced energy. A rubber band the instant after the break, before the snapback is complete. I’m carrying tension like air pockets in pottery: harmless until application of heat and pressure. 

I am experiencing (check all that apply): 

     Ennui.

     My mid-20s.

     Existential crisis. 

     Overwhelming boredom.

     The annual onset of heaviness.

     Accelerated passage of time.

     Angst and restlessness. 

It takes so little to unbecome, sitting in a room where you don’t exist. Ghosts don’t know how to make small talk. You can’t form words with no concept of voice box. It wasn’t so much that you were crying, just kind of quietly leaking... Swallow your own tongue. Wash it down with whiskey and candied ginger. 

I feel (check all that apply):

     Happy and in love. 

     Strange and anxious.

     Nostalgic for something I haven’t lost.

     Like my cells want to throw up.

     Like my hands don’t belong to me.

     Loose around the edges.

     Like I can’t explain. 

     Like a limit.

How do people do this and stay people? Every day waking up before the sun, arriving home after dark. My cells coil into themselves as if constriction will do anything other than emphasize the heartbeat. Cheap champagne unravels these veins so quickly. A splash of orange juice for color! I am the best sort of confessional—I can drink story after story and still take nothing from you. Maybe I’m the wishing well that lets you keep your pennies.  Or maybe I’m nothing like that at all, I don’t know.

I want to (check all that apply):

     Take a deep breath.

     Sleep until summer.

     Kiss you in the springtime.

     Trap the sun under my tongue. 

     Eat popsicles with reckless abandon.

     Stand somewhere high and yell loudly.

     Know weightlessness.  

     Hide in your bed. Potentially forever.

What I’m trying to express is I'm sorry for 1) spilling that wine and 2) man-handling that chicken. This is a trite and hyperbolic way of saying my life feels strange when I drink too much. I dream about oil spills, bare feet, and snowy highways. 

I need to (check all that apply):

     Drink water.

     See the sun.

     Get more sleep.

     Get out of my head. 

     Stop eating nachos in bed. 

     Not watch zombie movies after 8pm.

     Do some fucking laundry. 

Look up/the rain is falling/Looks like love.

-b