So many things.

There are so many things I want to do

but my body stands in front of me

and won’t let me by.

 

It’s breath is heavy

and moves slow as a cement truck.

 

So many things.

 

I tell my body that I want to live,

that it’s important for me to pick up the phone,

get out,

study the sky,

write it all down,

be a reporter for God.

 

So many things.

 

My body stares at me

and pushes me back with its eyes.

Cloaked in black,

it stands in my bedroom,

and a hoarse whisper blooms

with black smoke.

 

“You can’t get past me. I am not going to let you live.”

 

The figure of my body,

is hunched over,

jaundice-yellow eyes

staring out the window.

 

I can’t get past him.

 

How have I become

fractured,

furiously dismembered,

seperated from my body, from the spinning center of the Universe?

 

The room smells like crab apples and cold memories as I plan my next escape.

 

A lit window across the way lights a candle of hope in my heart.

 

What grave wrong

have I done to

cause an internal

civil war

in which both parties

of self perish?

 

The body guards the door of the room.

 

There is a hiss as my body wraps it’s cloak tighter.

I will live.

I will live.

With, or without, my body.