You woke up that morning to fingers with no palms and shoulder blades with no spine—Your body was gone that morning—I don’t remember where it went—I don’t remember where I put it, only that you were gone and you weren’t coming back

It was such a funny thing to wake up even after you’ve been buried alive, but still you climbed out of bed and stood on numb legs that didn’t shake and didn’t bend—A film covered the striped wallpaper, the fraying carpet, the creaking bed frame with the sheets rumpled even though no human had slept in them—An instant passed—A figure in the mirror, sharp lines, round skin, a bus window, a school, the halls yellow and dusty—You fell down into the tiles; you turned gray and bare—Do you remember how big the halls used to look?

You weren’t hiding but you weren’t there, either—You didn’t leave, but how could you have stayed?

Someone’s beady eyes between my fingertips—Are they yours?—Yours?

Bathtub bleeding out—Same yellow tile—Rocking back and forth—Stilted breathing, no breathing at all, stilling to silt and stone

Mama’s voice calling—The voice is gray—The hair is grayer—The entire world is gray, ashen, the moments flaking away, the film hardening to stone, people decaying into what they are, what they wish they weren’t, what they were always meant to be—Cracks branch like spiderwebs—There’s a hand on your shoulder—it’s rough and calloused—You glance at your own hands and the edges blur your vision, sinews and tendons and a thousand pale muscles pulling taut over the bones that you must live inside—What’s the woman saying?—Something about eating—you haven’t eaten in three days, how could you not notice?—How could you not eat?—As if not eating would stop the world passing by, crumbling like a bridge behind you—I don’t remember, you tried to say, but your throat caught and her hair began to blend to the wall, turning yellow and sickly

She’s worried about you, remember?—She’s crying over a pile of skin and bones

There’s a moment—There’s always a moment—One second, then the next, stretching out and out until you can wrap yourself in it and hide forever this time—There’s this horrible moment, this infinite moment, this moment that you hide in and hide from and are born of, when you don’t recognize the face, the face covered in film, the face of a person, a person—Something’s wrong—Something’s wrong

Papery skin touches skin and black eyes blink down, down—You could get lost in them, if you weren’t already—Your vision patches—Flesh drips away like candle wax, pooling on the floor—The face is whole again the next moment—There’s always a next moment—But then the face is whole again, the person is whole again—That’s more than can be said about you

Choking in the garden—Do you remember when we planted these weeds?—I know, you say—You push timid fingernails through the dirt and rocks and grass, until the earth crawls through your fingers—That’s what you are now—Fallen away—Not gone, just buried

Burying you was cruel, I think—Not to bury you—but to bury you still screaming, until the soil fills your lungs and you’re not sure if your body is alive or dead under the weight of the earth—I didn’t mean to be cruel, you understand?—I wasn’t cruel—We used to be friends when we were seven, until I buried you—Do you remember?

Something with legs and teeth crawls up your thigh, and a hand is flinging it away before it knows what it’s doing—There’s blood on your knuckles now, something dark and spreading—You didn’t mean to be cruel; it was alive, after all

That’s more than can be said about you

The sunlight spirals down from the sky like a ripped polaroid—Someone with ethereal hands and fingernails of clouds took the stained glass window of the sky and dropped it, shattering the jagged pieces all across the floor—Since when had the floor been so dark and cold?—Like yellow tile, ribs turning to ash all across the soil

A minute—An hour—A day—A week—A month—A year—A lifetime—They pass, but they don’t, twisting together like bleeding hands—You can’t grip on, you can’t let go—You’re below—You’re above, far above

Nothing’s Wrong, but nothing’s Right either—I’m starting to think there’s no such thing as Right and Wrong, only endless and endless Rights and Lefts in some invisible maze—Only something dark and spreading—creeping across my bathroom sink, past the toothpaste and unused toothbrush

Something’s Wrong—Your feet touch the ground, you know they do, but you’re numb to the cold—There’s something between you and the ground, you and the air, you and the world—You can see the world through the twisted film, but what are you going to do? You could push through, you could—If you had fingers—Hands—Arms—body

A thousand abstract paintings passing in a blur—Checkered blue dress standing in the middle of the room with a woman inside—that’s her, doing her zipper with shaking hands too large for her proportions—I live in the abstract, dissolving into what must have been colors—bleeding past the lines

On stage in an instant—Lights, just as bright as usual but blinding the darkness behind you—Words, in your throat and stained on your hands

Reciting—You’re meant to be reciting the sentences you didn’t write—Your name is on the top of the paper, something scrawled that looks wrong—like staring at your body in the mirror for long enough that you’re nothing but tangling limbs and unseeing eyes—Your name is on the top of the paper but you couldn’t have written this, could you?—It’s nothing but sentences and squiggles—Your name is on the top of the paper but it’s not your name, and this isn’t you, and this isn’t your body balancing on a flat piece of wood as a thousand eyes blink at you through those lights—The lights were so bright, do you remember?

You coaxed your ashen lungs to work, straining a small voice that was even too strong to be your own—Words, another sentence, more paragraphs, all squished together and flowing like water trapped between cupped palms—There’s a ringing coming from somewhere, somewhere far below or far above, something that you’ve only heard in your dreams

Not recently, of course—You don’t dream anymore—you know better

Some poison fills the lunchbox of your chest—You’re dying—You’re crawling out of the soil, to die—I know it—I remember

You used to be bursting at the seams, and now the seams are lost somewhere in all the other wrinkles you don’t remember grooving—If you could find the seams, clutch the white zipper and pull away, you’d collapse like the dust the astronomer told you you were

Bathtub—Flash—A mild feeling of panic growing faster and faster and faster again, cancer spreading from your ankles to your shins and up to where a heart should be—Clutching your knees, rocking every which way, but you can’t shake the sense that Something’s Wrong—Something’s Wrong, don’t you remember?—Don’t have eyes but—Why can’t you see?

You’re sitting in your too-big skin when the lights come on

***

There’s an eye in the mirror—Do you remember it’s yours?

It’s mine—It must be mine, this here—This is my stitched smile and my curled nose and my wooden palms

I blink and she’s gone, turned to lines and dust again

***

Was it a year or a lifetime before I woke up and found your body?

I’m starting to think I never did, not really—You fell into me every day, from the striped wallpaper, the fraying carpet, the creaking bedframe

There are these days now, when I look in the mirror when I almost see a face—There’s some voice echoing in my head, not like a ringing but like something soft to the touch

Do you remember?

I remember—I remember you

I clutched my left hand in my right—My palms shuddered and my skin broke under the pressure—It started to bleed, but I’m alive after all

That’s the most that can be said about me

Leaning on the edge of the sink, taking life on my back like a gift

Do I remember her?

It’s such a silly question now

Staring in the mirror—now I can’t look away—This is how it starts—I’m starting to worry this is all how it starts

I-never-forgot—Maybe-it’s-the-curse-after-all-that-I-never-forgot

I  never  forgot   Maybe  it’s  the  curse  after  all  that  I  never  forgot