What's it like to wake up and feel
the start of a new day?
I am awake with every breath, with every
moment, whether I want to be or not.
The sunlight inches closer,
but doesn't breach the sacred boundary.
Yesterday brought on full-body shakes -
falling downward, curtains closed, silver
shadows; it's incomprehensible to realize
it only lasted an hour,
how something so terrifying, yet so intimate,
could be controlled by the concept of time.
And didn't you, hours prior, joke about how
poetic my thoughts on death seemed?
Is it a muse of mine, perhaps?
Even when I apologized, not meaning to
consciously romanticize death,
I wonder if I did mean it, refusing to push
back death and paint it as some villain.
The push-and-pull, the momentum...
all the in-betweens,
all the curiosities,
all the anger of not being enough
for life (or death),
this intolerance of uncertainty.
Like the worksheet you printed in your office,
like your enthusiasm to jump straight into it,
like my inability to process in the moment,
the easy surrender into saying it makes sense,
when I don't know how to exactly be on board.
Maybe I just want to be different.
Maybe I'm causing this for myself.
Maybe these contradictions are too comfortable,
maybe I look forward to getting angry when
nobody sees or holds my pain,
so I can blame it on others instead of my resolve
to never open up, never show the cracks.
Wanting to disappear, to not be seen by you,
yet craving validation, and being scared
I will ask too much.
That I will rely on more than is good for me.
I am a memory of my past and a product of
continuing trauma,
though I tell myself I have agency and a choice.
Can I really control my future if it's
entirely unknown?
