Better to be out in the world than at home alone with my thoughts. My undoing has always been my thoughts maybe also my feelings and my struggle to control things outside of myself. The tricky way I refine thoughts, smooth their edges, shaping them into an hourglass, waiting for time to dilute them, expel them, staining my hands. The thoughts that trigger the feelings, the feelings that are valid but irrational and then the explanation that tries to rationalize the feelings. It is all a tricky dialogue between self idealized and self-actualized. The person I want to be is unencumbered by insecurity and does not interpret the actions of others as personal and internalize them as an inward struggle.
Protecting yourself, building your armor, a black insect shell.
Tightening the abdomen, twisting the nettles, like a cyst with teeth and hair, the uncomfortable feeling grows. Outside the world is indifferent. Inside the walls of the apartment seem plaintive. Chalk drawn on asphalt, erased with a palm. You wander into yourself, cyclonic. The vortex is death; the resistance is life.
Being ignored, abandoned or simple not being wanted conjures thoughts of vast deficiency. This is an old wound. The unlovable, the old record the familiar tune.
Under the stairs, the cellar, the attic. Call to me now from force of habit. The smell of black dye in fabric, a promise you made now rescinded: Keep in touch. You crawled like a wounded animal to its death, never to be heard from again.