Dissolved and Drained

My brain has hurt for weeks. Daily headaches. Lethargy. Muscle cramps. I feel as if I am being pushed, yet at the same time, chained to an invisible wall inside my mind. Unable to fully accomplish all I want to. And why? Because I am expected to. Because I am told to. All I want is to drink beer. Not even that. To lie in a bathtub until I drain away. I step into the steaming hot water, my feet fade away like tiny sugar crystals in the wet. Next my legs fall to pieces--off in chunks until, they too, tingle away. My upper body hurriedly follows; it doesn’t want to live without my legs. My arms are hesitant though, waving in the air, hoping that I stop this madness, but no. I push my arms in the sweaty water and watch them sliver away like the sand on green seaweed, I watch my arms decay. I dunk my head under. I disappear. Years go by and the heat wanes. The drain unplugs.

Like the lukewarm water that circles down the pipes, I expect to go with it. My body’s like left over cake frosting in a mixing bowl thrown in a kitchen sink of just-filled dish water.

How did I not dissolve? Why didn’t I go down with the rest of the muck?

It’s been so dark here. The sun sets by 4--if it decides to come out at all. I feel trampled by the gray. The sharp cold sneaking through cracks in the window panes. Have you ever looked up and watched the tree limbs crackle and shake with laughter? Daily I watch their moods. And they watch me. We seem to share mutual feelings toward the dismal weather. They try to shake it away. I gaze at them with puppy-dog eyes hoping they can sense my empathy. But they’re too stoic to comment. I know if I stare at them long enough, one day they will reveal all of their secrets. Those trees. They watch me. I watch them. They shake. And I am left aching for the zip, the zeal, the zest of life to pump back into my blood.

And I become undone. Over and over.

Every night I tell myself tomorrow will be a more productive day. For years this seems to have been the slogan, the mantra I repeat until dreams impose upon my sleep. And I realize I’d rather stay there for as long as I can; especially since the really good ones happen right when my alarm clock startles me from slumber. So, I shut it off.

Hoping to fall back into the dream, but it’s never the same. A faint memory of the imagination, something that was never real to begin with, but I yearn for it all the same.

And do we ever really feel full? Do we always want whatever it is we don’t have? Or to not have what we already do. The binary divide. Nothing can complete us, except ridding our minds of needing to feel complete.

Is it all just a paranoia ride, a lust, a cheap fuck, a game we never chose to play, a life that comes covered in blood, screaming with fear, not feeling the real, just yet. All because nine months earlier two others came with pleasure, not pain, a cyclical karmic effec

t of humanity. And we do it every day, all the same. With birth control and alcohol. With cell phones and sexting, power plays and getaways. with peanut butter and molesting, with lubricants. And you, suggesting.

The cucumbers are pickled. The nipples are wrinkled. The love that you’re after, is the hope you’re caressing. Deep within your blood. On the surface of your bath tub. The un-dissolved. The left-over matter. The big lump of cells shaped like a woman. Pushing her way. Away from the drain.

Have you ever looked up and watched the mood of the trees? Have they ever told you a secret you never could share?

An abstract idea, made tangible with the touch, the tip of the tongue.

And I become undone. Over and over.