feet planted, hands soaring

Tonight my eyes are big with the souls of the crushed. The torrents of pain are beating at my windows, and I am ready to break loose, to pour forth. But a ghost of a hand stops me, reaching up from my chest to quiet the clouds.

Tonight anger is hanging heavy from my ears like fruit before the harvest. Insects flutter back and forth, searching for their sustenance. I can only swat at them, hoping they will grow weary and falter.

Tonight is a night of emotions. Emotions like the smell of the ocean, layer upon layer. I could lay back and twitch my nose for hours, trying to unravel the ball of yarn in my neck. I have scribbled shades of blue and frustration across my forehead before, and nothing has changed. I can feel words forming deep inside me, clawing their wretched way up the spiral staircase behind my stomach, tingling with power and space. Each letter shows its face, whether snarling or singing, and they join hands in an attempt to say something, anything. Anything.

We are all selfish, I scream to her in my head. That's why I can't tell you. Because I am selfish and you are selfish and they are selfish and there's nothing we can do to avoid it. We're just fools, laughing our way through this joke of existence.

And she stares back, like I always knew she would. Her reply stings like iodine.

But of course we are. That's what was always wrong with me and you. That's why we're here.

Or rather, why you're here. I'm not here at all.

With a wink and half a smile, she fades into what she always was to me, in my selfishness.

This isn't how it was supposed to be.