and suddenly i understand
what they mean when they say
it's impossible to breathe in space.
it feels like somebody
has turned the gravity off
inside of my body.
i don't know
how to get home from here.
-mars
The Observable Universe via NASA https://ift.tt/2ypYohd
As the days melt into months, she's convinced there's some character inside her that has no face, all elbows, and matte skin pulled over every orifice. All elbows.
She opens her mouth to the sky, and falls back first into terror. Another delusion about Greywalkers, or something.
She spins on one knee and rests her cheek against her leg, pressing one ear to the ground, listening for tremors, or a very hollow sound that will remind her she's still on Earth. She imagines this sound is suspended inside the Earth's upper mantle like a milky silver disk, and it resonates for her and only a few people to hear who know it.
She closes her eyes, and everything is black, like experiencing death without waking up. Like every person who fucked her dead. Like every worst thing that ever happened to her. And saying goodbye to everything she knows.
As the good feelings become doubts, she remembers how easy it would be to fail-to give up-to lose-she remembers every bad thing anyone has said to her, and lets her head fall back.
She traces one finger up her stomach, imagining she is a character in a movie, desired-loved and adored for her body, opposite a young Mickey Rourke, running an ice cube over her bottom lip to her hip bones.
When her stomach quivers and her lips tremble, she opens her eyes to an empty room that begins to vibrate in big pulsing waves. She feels dizzy, and the cat becomes a wild unnatural thing. Pushing the boundaries of her imagination she has three conversations with the devil and two more with herself, and a ghost, a murderer, a clown, a monster, and someone from outer space, until she's tired, tired, tired.
She breathes heavily-exhaustingly and fills her mind with tarot card readings to fall asleep, letting everyone else tell her how she should feel-like a lullaby. Remembering that when she wakes up in the morning, the sun will come back, and it's harder to hide evil when the sun's shining.
At least when the sun comes back, she won't wrestle with a metaphorical cage compressing her heart into four separate pieces-lust, envy, greed and malice.
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