My body is where my mind is not. Not that I prefer dualism,
but reality slips away and I am left drowning in my thoughts.
My body sits in class, it walks through the halls, and it lies on the bed,
but you mustn’t be fooled: My body is where my mind is not.

Though it may seem that I am a whole being, I do not exist anymore.
I am an empty shell, now; a science experiment for the world to see.
My brain is split in two: one half here, one half not and i cannot tell them apart.
I live in a purgatory of conscious thought and oblivion.

My body is a vessel set to roam the great world, but my mind is absent.
I’m a two dimensional being with one leg in reality and the rest of me, fingering death.
It feels like driving through a foreign neighborhood for the first time, miles from home.
Or like sleeping at a stranger’s house at a stupid party you know you shouldn’t be at.

To escape the cold, steel floor of reality, my mind dissolves itself.
It flies to the moon, or it flees to a distant island, or sometimes it sits still in constant darkness.
The darkness is what I fear more than anything. It smothers me with the absence of light
until my being is coated in a thick layer of negative space.

That feeling—that not knowing when my mind will leave the darkness,
is the single most terrifying thing I have encountered in my life.
I am a mouse and my brain is a lion, and the two cannot coexist.
My body is where my mind is not.

I am gemini’s cousin, only I was not born this way.
Instead, this ability to defy dimensions was bestowed upon me by an unkind acquaintance.
A cold, forceful hand stole my innocence on a fall night and I was never the same.
I wrote him a letter years later and he was too cowardly to speak up.

It’s like I’m floating somewhere above my body, watching life unfold
but I am not participating: I am a bystander to my own story.
Slowly I’ve faded to be the background vocals of my life’s soundtrack
but my mind can’t tell my body to go out there and take life back.

There is a disconnect. A disconnect between my consciousness and my higher being
that prohibits any creativity or any happiness. It dominates my dull world.
There is no more color, just a film of black and white, covering my view.
My mind is a jail and all happiness has escaped. I wish to escape too.

I know I could simply retire myself any given day, you see.
I’m not sure what has stopped me from kissing the sweet metal of Father’s rifle.
Death is comfortable and the only constant in life. If all else fails, I rely on death’s weary arms
to carry me home after a long, hard day of work.

My mind is where my body is not.