This bed is a ship

July 22, 2016.

The world is hard. I want to be soft. But fuck, I want to be less fragile. Having a hard time of it lately, all made up of bristle bits and hairline fractures and rotten peach bruise feelings that don’t want to get out of bed. The world is so full of problems I don’t know how to fix, and I can’t even take care of my own small and petty needs, obligations, worries. I think about giving up, moving back to my mother’s house, becoming a recluse, walking alone to the water each day and simply staring, watching tides, writing tender little apolitical poems about my own disintegrating heart. I think about starting over in a dozen new careers I don’t have the stamina for, or the capital investment. I try to step back and look at my anger, a wounded animal I spot across a field. I recall the overwhelming certainty of my own death I feel each time I march with a crowd. I think about the people who have wronged me. I think about the people I love, and how infrequently I feel capable of showing them that love. I read the news, both too much and not enough. I resent the fact that people I do not wish to talk to about all of this will speak to me at length, and some voices I would love to hear will be silent, or have been forever silenced. I watch depression turn the sky green in the distance, feel the whipping up of air grown sudden cold. I have no time to hide in bathtubs, no time to drive to safer country. The house is slowly filling up with water, dirty from the broken pipes, from my possessions leaking dye and ink. I am swimming. I pray to old ocean gods. My form is poor and my breath is ragged and the winds blow harsh but I am swimming.

Sid BrancaComment