The Things I Want To Say Get Stuck In My Mouth

You don't even sing my songs, you just hum along



When it's too good to be true, it probably is. But when it's reasonable and you want it more than anything, anxiety fills your lungs, your throat, your tear ducts, and most specifically, your mind. One organ at a time my body will fail me.

Sometimes in the middle of the night when I cannot sleep because of chaos running laps between my ears, I email long paragraphs to my mother and I reminisce about my life. Things from my life that I love, things that I miss, things that hurt and still hurt and change how I am today. I worry when something I want is dangled in front of me, in fear that it might be taken or turned on me, as similar situations have in the past. I believe very much in the body manifesting disease in areas where you hold emotions, so I try to rid my body of the negatives ones as soon as possible, mostly, through conversation with my mother.

My heart is weak and unreliable. When I go it will be my heart. I try to burden it as little as possible. If something is going to have impact I direct it elsewhere. My gut for example, or my lungs, which might seize up for a moment but have never yet failed to take another breath.


The pancreas I reserve for being struck by all that's been lost. It's true that there's so much, and the organ is so small. You would be surprised by how much it can take, all I feel is a quick sharp pain and then it's over.


Sometimes I imagine my own autopsy. Disappointment in myself: right kidney. Disappointment of others left in me: left kidney. Personal failures: kishkes. It's just that I notice certain patterns. When the clocks are turned back and the dark falls before I'm ready, this, for reasons I can't explain, I feel in my wrists. And when I wake up and my fingers are stiff, almost certainly I was dreaming of my childhood.


Yesterday I saw a man kick a dog and I felt it behind my eyes. I don't know what to call this, a place before tears. The pain of forgetting: spine. The pain of remembering: spine.


Loneliness: there's no organ that can take it all.