the debt collector comes knocking.

there's a ringing in my ears, a knocking, or more of a banging at the door of myself.

I was taught never to answer the door when you are home alone and I have always felt as if I am home alone in this body; so I let the doorbell ring through one ear and out the other echoing through the empty hallways of my wiry body. leave the door unanswered to whoever wants in. I let the knock shake the frame of my bones that I call home as I wait for whoever's there to go away.

I do the only logical thing and go open the door once there is no one there to answer to. A note left shoved in between the doorframe, big bold letters on it read:

are you ready to get out of town? pack your bags, your debts, your sorrows! WE CAN HELP! call, 1-800-GET-OUT-OF-YOUR-HEAD.

now, this is weird. Yet I'm thinking this could be like that one episode of Spongebob y'know, where they get someone telling them to get out of town and while they are sitting their panicking thinking this guy is literally threatening their whole existence as in pack your bags and be on the next bus out of here and never show your faces again OR ELSE. yet all he is trying to do offer them is a vacation.

This could be like that.

OR

it could be like the whole fucking plotline of Alice in wonderland.

I contemplate how much sorrow does it take to just jump down the rabbit hole? There really is nothing to contemplate it is more of a matter of convincing myself to find and jump down the rabbit hole.

The white rabbit appears in the hallways of myself trying to find the way out, screaming: "YOU'RE late. YOU'RE late, no time to contemplate. YOU'RE late. not me, you! YOU'RE late, no time to contemplate."

I have never belonged to myself,

I have leaned on many, but never myself,

I have thought and acted but never as myself,

I have reached for myself in others and found myself once again stepping into their skin, their shoes, their desires, their perceptions of me.

a label printed across my chest that reads ' mint condition '. Meaning barely used, sat on a shelf its whole life, and ready to sit on another.

I have always been another doll in someone else's collection, only ever existed for looks, as a prized possession, as a stepping stone or doormat.

There's another knock at my door and this time I let it rattle my bones into action. I swing open the door of myself which is to say my heart and scream I'm coming with,

the debt collector stands in front of me with a smile on his face, holds out his hands, and says:

"two pennies and a dime, first. Thank you."