Gonna

I'm gonna go crawl home until my head stops hurting. I'm gonna go whisper my name into my pillow to see if I can get it to cry too. I'm gonna drive the smell of sex and sweat from my room by force and patience, by a window left open all day so a breeze can sweep through and rip my essence from my belongings. The memories of physicality become polluted, corrupted by the very caress I grant them. There is nothing permanent. There is only the shadow the past casts on the future, foreshadowing a literary version of cause and effect. Would that my life were a narrative, guaranteed an inevitable victory.

I'm gonna take this pain and eat it. I'll chew on it, crunching my teeth into fragments. I'll let it swim through my lungs and heart, occupy every laboured breath. It's toxic. It slips through my degraded blood, the scratch marks draining the data from the disk. I'm filthy and the dirt never comes off because it's baked into my skin. It's a part of me. The soap simply rips off fragments, always bigger fragments, until there's nothing left.

I'm gonna throw up. I'm gonna eject the disgusting mass from my insides. I'm gonna rip it out and my stomach and lungs and guts along with it. I'm gonna set myself intact, gently dissecting. I'm gonna be sympathetic. I'm gonna be spiteful. I'm gonna hurt myself in ways indescribable. I'm gonna break.

I'm gonna drag myself from door to door, down streets lashing rain. The burning of the sun on my back tells me of my humanity, as though the screaming of muscles was insufficient. As though it could ever matter to me what my status was, how I appear to others. I'll carve a path of regrets by what I failed to achieve. I'll walk through the trench of missed opportunities, sipping through the water that crests the sides. Muddy and gross, I'll drip it into the IV that keeps me alive, that keeps me standing. Let the flow become a river that carries me to the ocean, at times fighting and at times curling up and crying. I'm a rock on the bottom of the river and it's carving me smooth and forgettable.

I'm gonna beg for sleep to take me, with curtains shut against the harsh light of the cop cars across the street. I'm gonna beg for relief. I'm gonna beg for the world to stop overnight, for me to catch up. Let my brain return, free from the weight of exhaustion. It keeps me tied down, tied in place. I can't think. I can't do anything that costs thought. The exhaustion is a physical thing, a beast that stalks my every move. I think I might be screaming. But my hands won't move and my lungs are too full. I'm overflowing.

I'm gonna fight the terror, but it's hard because there are so many. I'm terrified that the next time I cough, it'll come out bloody. I'm terrified that the muscles in my legs and back will snap and fall loose. I'm terrified that I'll ragdoll across the city until the gentle feelers of the lake can take me and hold me safely. I'm terrified that I have nothing left to give.

I'm gonna do it all, I swear. The list of things I need to do only grows, but I'm spread too thin. I promise and promise and promise. But mostly, I just miss researching and writing and walking and biking and being myself. But long days in bed waiting for the pain to abide only drive me further to despair. And I'm marking myself with all the things I'm going to do, project list a mile long and all the emails left unanswered. Oh, how they must hate me. Am I a waste? Is that all there is? I can catch up, maybe.

I want it to be okay because I'm gonna live

I promise, I'm gonna live

I'm gonna live