bed

my friend asked me what i was doing. from my bed I said “getting groceries.”

I’m plugged in so I can watch all the people who live inside my phone give up on me.

this isnt my bed but im kinda too busy to stand up and take a pic but more on that later.

Relatives call to tell me they are dying unaware that I’m actively trying to cut down the family tree.

they are afraid of death. they aren’t ready to leave their children.

All I can say is “have you tried CBD?”

my feet hang above the void with white knuckles gripping the guard rail. The balcony on the 4th floor isn’t high enough to kill me, but I’d probably just break my legs.

I’m singing the “I’m not really dying” song that I make up as I go during an episode. These walls are the only good therapy I’ve had. These walls don’t talk—they listen.

I used to do a month in semi-solitary without an IV of everclear, and now I’m twitching without a soft voice in my ear.

This is an airBNB—not my home. sometimes there are trumpets blaring out the window at 4am, but mostly it’s just men screaming at their demons or the women who’ve just rejected them.

a bottle of antipsychotics goes into the “I’m not taking these anymore” bag. the world is ending so it doesn’t matter if I think the world is ending.

as a sooth-sayer, I’m paid to say “I told you so.”

there are too many eyes on the street at all hours. Too many conflicting voices. Every pair of sunglasses makes my fists tighten. Nothing much has changed.

staring at still black steeples dotting the horizon before and after lockdown reminds me of insomnia.

a hundred feet to the shop on the corner, and I’m counting them as quickly as I can. It feels like running on a treadmill in the centre of an observation room. Life is a panopticon.

this I know.

When you eat a lot of gas station sandwiches it’s hard to tell anxiety from hunger. Hard to tell hunger from lithium tremor.

one of these days I’d like to wake up in a hospital bed.

old habits, or new tricks?

one of these days I’d like to tell everyone in the world I love them, even if it’s not true.

thirty-one days in May and I’ve been pretending it’s forever.

there should be a black hole between Saturday and Sunday. I’d like to fall into a perfect moment and never leave.

a pair of seagulls open their wings on the railing of the balcony of the airBNB. It could be a sign, but there’s still Abilify in my brain, so I don’t see it.

my hands are always lingering on the things I shouldn’t leave behind. The soft things. The pointy things that stick in your gut. I shouldn’t go without them, but I will.