there once was

"My world falls apart, crumbles, “The centre cannot hold.” There is no integrating force, only the naked fear, the urge of self-preservation. I am afraid. I am not solid, but hollow. I feel behind my eyes a numb, paralysed cavern, a pit of hell, a mimicking nothingness. I never thought. I never wrote, I never suffered. I want to kill myself, to escape from responsibility, to crawl back abjectly into the womb. I do not know who I am, where I am going—and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions. I long for a noble escape from freedom—I am weak, tired, in revolt from the strong constructive humanitarian faith which presupposes a healthy, active intellect and will. There is nowhere to go."

— Sylvia Plath

the way a train approaches a tunnel
the way a tunnel engulfs a train
the way bold darkness eats every train
the way every train just keeps going head-on

the way i am running out of words
the way time is slipping through my sore fingers
the way the bones in my fingers shiver & crack with only the weight of time
the way the lines in my palms map to nowhere
the way i sometimes am a kaleidoscopic image—every part of me is a reflection of the other
the way i wish i knew how to stop using words as a form of adhesive
the way i wish there was an instruction manual on how to just breathe