there's an icepick running down the length of my spine, some kind of liquid in between my toes, and my face is swollen shut- with fear or sertraline I can't tell. A laugh that sounds like a snarl escapes my lips as my head lolls to the side and drool streams from my mouth, mixing with blood that's dried on my neck. A small bug is lodging itself into the lining of my stomach, I can feel it trying to penetrate the tissue, convulsions raking through my whole body. I'm rolling, grasping my stomach, and heaving blood onto the wet concrete. My eyes won't concentrate on anything but the dead polar bear I've hidden my numb feet under for a little bit of warmth and the slippery blood underfoot.

A girder hangs on the bed frame and I've finally realized that my mother was a girl at some point in her life. My grandmother speaks and I close my eyes- she turns into the 97 pound beauty she was at the end of the 50's. I can imagine her giggle is what my grandfather fell in love with, and that her eyes were things wars were fought over.

I stood so still I could feel the night pulsing off of me in rivulets of sweat running down my forearms and the world was just another plaything in your eyes. Insomnia leaks out of your ears and out of the blue sack of flesh under your lower lid if only there were words to make you comfortable enough to sleep but now there is only silence and the memory of silence. Is this your 3 a.m.? Is this what every fear was supposed to be made of but now you can only feel awkward pauses, looks of disappointmentdespairragefear, and somehow your mother's ghost of a hand on your cheek. I have melted my fingertips to the coffee cup trying to stay alive and coherent enough, licked my fingers before pressing them to the iced can in hopes I see through restless nights and something I can't quite explain that keeps me up.

You've hit me like a rock and I'm so furious I want to cry and punch a wall, I've missed you more than I know and timeisAWFUL and whatthefuckinghell, where did you come from with this?

all my love was down in a frozen ground, remember?

i don't do silence well.