She Tastes Like The Metallic Burn Of Blood.

Sometimes I feel it behind my eyes. Like a pressure. Just reminding me that it's there. An acknowledgement.

But rarely does it bloom into that sad wet thing.

Running hot down my cheeks.

I've never been someone who cries much.

But then again I've never had much to cry about.

Just never had much.

Crying over nothing. The lack. The absence never made sense to me.

There is a feeling. A sadness. But no tears.

I wish. God I wish.

You'd give me something to cry about.

Wanna feel that release.

Always stuck somewhere between too much work and not enough

I can't start until I'm desperate

I can't stop until I'm burnt out

Stop telling me I have to be pure, to be worth it.

I was told I needed to learn to sit with my grief. to hold its hand and mother it. to allow it to exist within me.

But I don't think I can mother anything, not even myself. I sit beside my grief, hand in hand. We're staring at each other. both wondering why we're here.

I don't consider myself particularly religious.

But I think I might understand why rural areas are so full of superstition.

Not out of an antiquated idea of ignorance.

But because if you've ever seen dawn bleed red into the dying breath of a bright white night, then you'd know God too.

The only difference between a monster and a hero is motive

I spent so much time trying to tell you how much you look like the sky.

I was wrong, the sky looks like you.

Long ago I accepted that my mind would always outrun my body. It would be an exhausting existence but one I could ultimately cope with. I spent all of my youth studying for it, how to live with my own mind. How to make room for it in my life. I looked it in its wild eyes as it promised it would never be tamed. And that was fine. I swallowed my dread determined to live anyways. To perservere.

I was unprepared for my body to start lagging further behind. I should still be young. Barely an adult. But my body is degrading around me nonetheless My joints creak and ache, my muscles fall slack and weak. I can't carry the weight I could before. I cannot hold a knife correctly to cut my vegetables, I can't even muser up enough strength to stand throughout the day. Always having to stop and catch my breath.

My mind is only getting faster and more unruly as it grows but my body is quickly becoming infirm. I worry the two halves of my existence will pull me apart refusing to live together.

What will become of me when I am abandoned by both?

That sobering moment when you are brushed by death. Only by proxy; a tragedy twice removed.

But you see different, taste different, feel different.

Confronted by the fragile state that is humanity. When death is more than just mortality and morbidity.

Floating without even grief to hold your heart. Unbroken and unsure.

It drips and splatters over her forearms. Crusting along each delicate finger joint and congealing where it packed into the curve of each cuticle. Painting her skin gray like the dust of age and time.

It drips onto her shoes and stains the hem of her shirt. It falls in spinning splatters to soak the denim of her jeans in thick drops.

In this mess, she gives birth to something new. There, by the potter's wheel.