breakdown

the air is not cold, not sharp,

i wish it was.

wish it was cold enough for me to open my mouth and guzzle the chill down my throat, gasping at the shock, feeling the air slapped against my face,

but instead it’s lukewarm

i pad out in pajamas and note,

the lack of difference between inside and outside,

shit, i think, it leaves me space to think.

so i do but i don’t, i look for a new distraction,

find it between the leaves of the ordinary but extraordinary tree,

God warbles at me from a branch. i sit beneath and talk to Him for a while.

the air is not cold enough, i say. it’s not cold enough not nearly. fucking make it colder, won’t you? and he warbles back like a drowned man peering up from the bottom of a pool.

i ask him questions he doesn’t answer, and stare at the stars when they don’t answer either, and it’s nighttime but it’s so loud and i’m one person but i’m so loud too and tired and i just wish it was colder.

then it’s been an hour and there’s voices,

and all they want is to drag me back into solitude, a place where God isn’t warbling the secrets of a universe from a tree branch,

and where my thoughts aren’t bright as the stars,

and where it’s exactly the same temperature,

so what’s the point, why leave?

is it colder inside?

Satan, fallen bastard, make it colder.

moon, gleaming beauty, make it colder.

she glares down at me as I plead, stars shaking their heads with pity, "how long do you think she’s been thinking?"

oh too long, i say, flippant and casual and smiling. make it cold again, God.

he just pushes me inside, and

back in my staid prison of lukewarm, and

back into the box with God and the moon and the insects all begging me to stay with them, and

and i’m crying. they’ll be somewhere else tomorrow.

so then the cold will have to wait.

i traipse and think, they must be so concerned, they’ll want to talk to me,

and i pause outside their door, knock and enter, all tentative.

"Hello, I’m damaged."

i will never forget,

the plastic smiles,

sticky and sour under a wash of yellow light.

“i’m going to bed. i’m fine, you know.”

“goodnight sweetheart, goodnight.”