Malaise

Have you ever woken up in a gray sea,

where you watched your muscles, torpid, moving

in slow motion; break apart like light

in waves. Fractal. Fracted. Each color is

just another shade of blue.

Okay, maybe this: Imagine a soft bed

where everything sinks sweet like a

lullaby. One you’ve never heard but no

one has ever told you how a song can be dishonest.

So you fall, willing, like a baby, slumber,

like a dream. Then, when you open your

eyes, you can’t find morning. Like someone

turned out the sun and no one will

tell you the direction of day. All I can see

is my hands, pressing against what feels

like - at least - twenty-three

sopping wet quilts. Made, not by my

grandmother’s fingers needling, but

by every breath I haven’t yet breathed.

And just that - the idea of a future -

shit, just surviving this moment - is

absolutely terrifying.

Or, close your eyes and forget how

to open them again. My legs are sandcastles

and my hearts is the encroaching tide

- slowly, slowly - I become the mud

that cements into a deathdoor,

a trap for anything it finds running. So,

everything I ever wanted, fleeing without

me, suddenly entombed, fading

silently in an icy grave. My skin

is a sarcophagus I didn’t know I was

wearing. Lined with oils and roses to

mask the smell of rotting.

Now, think a dilapidated ship,

and you’re its sole occupant but your

friends are nearby, each a passing boat, and

they all say they’re here for you, the water

is fine but they can’t see from the

distance how deeply you’re sinking. Like,

everyone recognizes a distress signal, but

no one knows what to do about it.

They can’t see the engines have stopped

running, the hull is flooding. And not with

water, but the contents of your cargo.

Barrels broken by violent thrashings,

a noxious fetor, seeping each splinter in

kerosene. And you, somnambulistic, like

waking in a nightmare, can’t stop

striking matches. Like help is a foreign

language and self-immolation is the only

way of asking. Impervious to my own reason

because I am already burning. You see,

my body is a wooden ark reduced to ashes,

diminished to a single stream of smoke,

with the fire out, I have no use

for breathing. My throat has closed up

and left my mouth gaping.