i try to fit my mouth around the right syllables, stretch over ovals of ohs like pebble stones river rocks smooth and unfamiliar in my mouth, an egg from the grocery store unfertilized and stillborn abortions abortions tripping the wrong words clenched unwilling between my teeth. i crack. late nights my mind fiddles with my traumas like the wisdom teeth rotting in my jawbones. i will not leave a beautiful skeleton. i regret: friends left by the wayside in this burgeoning depression, reminders reminders i do not want; but i lose more and more to this void yearning in the front of my brain, this endless spiral twist turning in my prefrontal cortex, the mist mash the fog it consumes me and i am lost lost losing. losing. how is it i find myself losing when i always thought i would be the one lost? and i am. pulled back and forth the tide! it comes and ebbs and flows pulled by an unknown moon and i and i and i am helpless, laid bare, a control freak lost all control, sand in my mouth like the child i was caught in the wave tossed in the sand gritty in between my teeth i feel it visceral in a way i feel nothing else anymore these days. i feel on a stage. i feel as a stage. i feel my feet burning the hot pavement a young body not grown into its height but standing so so tall so proud my feet and my cousins on the pavement walking in the hot summer sun it felt like miles but we did it, our soles blistered, but accomplished, the pain a reminder of what we set out to do because they said we couldn’t. but we did. i miss that feeling. i yearn for the hot blistering feet of accomplishment. maybe i will see it again. i hope so.
