One Page #18

I heard a scraping behind me that hurts my ears and caused my head to spin faster in circles that were so great I could feel the pull of the tides and the race of the waves and the reverberations of the crashing waters in my ears that were full from the cold that filled my head with a weight that caused my chin to sag and my eyes to droop and the skin around my nostrils was red and sore like my lungs that could only manage a slow shallow breath because my thoughts were trembling on the fear of whether I would make it through the day since it is only mid afternoon and already the day feels lengthened and stretched into a taut rope (that is ready to snap) that spans the then with the almost but leaves out the middle of the now where I am and I feel like I have been passed over and ignored because I was too vague to be seen and as I sit and watch my fingers trembling I wonder how much longer I will be able to manage the distance that separates me from the only other thing that makes sense to me right now, but then I remember the now doesn’t exist because it is already then and I feel better because I am not stuck in this second I am only stuck in the second that has passed along behind me and since I managed that second and the one that has just passed me by again I can manage whatever other ones come along soon and I will just concentrate on the steam that rises from my mug in front of me as I look into that deepening red that is interfered only by the tea bag that is losing while the water around it is gaining and there is a constant exchange but the levels stay the same and that doesn’t quite make enough sense to me and so I take a sip and forget about that (ex)change and think instead about the sweetness that is warming all the way down to a place that I carry with me always but will never see and I begin to think that maybe it doesn’t even exist and really my tea is pooling in different sections of my body like my toes and the crevice around my bent knees and maybe even in the recesses of my back where it aches from sitting too long and I hope that the warm will sooth the ache and I will be able to stand and walk away and think about nothing that has just happened because I only want to move forward and forget about that which is behind me because it keeps poking me in the back where it hurts and reminding me and making my cheeks prick with embarrassment that I was fool enough to fall into your trap and since you have walked away and disappeared now I can think about it without your continual reaching out then pushing away and why didn’t you just admit that you needed someone and I was the only one and so I saved you and was left empty because I gave it all away.