birthday '23

I am up. I am up, but I don’t want to get up. I will lie here, without budging an inch, eyes tightly shut. I don’t want that single ray of light breaking through that crack in the curtains hurting my eyes, ravaging my mind; that one ray of light whose sole purpose is to wake me up, get me up, dress me up, fuck me up.

So no, I don’t want to get up, this day, or any other day. Why should I get up anyway? What does this day have to offer? As soon as it begins, I will need to take a deep-dive into abject servility. Every person that I meet will try and educate me on which end is up. And I will only be left loathing myself for allowing every dipshit into my mind, to play with the monsters that lurk in all its dark recesses. Every moment of the day will be filled with dread, of a phone call or a message or an email portending imminent doom. The mourning for my lack of a spine will begin early, as will the realization of how little I know of the world, and how easy it is for even the most superficially clever to run circles around me.

I will be overwhelmed way before the day is out. I will seek emotional support from those who ought to be looking towards me instead. And when I see the fear and the confusion and the incapacity in their eyes, my inadequacies will begin their naked dance of reproof. I will writhe and ferment and despair in my own head until I can take it no more. All because of that one sneaky, unwelcome ray of light. Where is my ray of light? That can blind me to my own miserable self; that can lift me up from oblivion and give me a fleeting sense of being alive?

Go away, stealthy, slinky ray from an unwanted sun. I am not getting up, not until my eyes refuse to stay shut any longer; or my bladder bursts.

a hospice for bruised souls

Walls

that keep out

the world's incessant need

to interfere,

and doors

that only let in love. 

A quiet solitude

for the ministrations

that bring the half-dead

back to life,

that exorcize 

the demons carried over

from normality,

and windows

that admit

just the right amounts of sun

as catalyst

to the process,

a balm

to festering sores. 

A peace

undisturbed

by the moans

of the suffering 

as their suffering

melts away,

and a salubrious bliss

settles in,

fleeting

or permanent,

who is to say? 

An aura

that tempers 

the heat

of body & mind,

and interprets anew

all meanings

of tenderness,

of passion,

of care. 

This is a hospice

for bruised souls