stream; one

And when you’ve had enough you close your eyes in the shower and you listen to your muffled heartbeat up your neck and through your ears, each throb biting at you before sliding slowly down your wrists and fingers and off their tips, the water gushing through them like a perfect extension down the drain and as you rest your head on the tiles it becomes all of a sudden too real and sharp-edged but before it all falls away the piecemeal returns of water flowing around your feet and of the flutter in your stomach that split itself without warning; something that you don’t even try to understand except that you’re sure that that was you once, but you can’t remember it through the heat in your cheeks and no matter where you stand the sun seems to be right in your eyes, but its rained for the past two days and you don’t want to think of your limbs forming tired lines of space that run listless behind you like they don’t even belong to you at all because this isn’t you but you can’t help it so you do and it is, your curvature stuck on the white sheets and your body in the opposite corner with your wet hair dripping down the small of your back in fleeting strokes, while the jab high in your ribcage when you breathe becomes more forceful and determined with every inhale but your mind is too slow to catch it so instead you stand there longer and push the cool sharpness all the way down into the depths of your lungs just to remind you that this is real and that you’re okay, your fingers cradling the tissue under your breast and the looping thud of your life.  

November 2011.