Actually, I Think I am Just Going to Go to Sleep

Yes, yes we do.

“A Skeleton in Water” (Wow, Sammi, you're so good at titles. Thanks, Sammi!)

I.

In closing my eyes,

my eyelids cover the distance

of 100 miles, and again

when opening them.

The ceiling and I

(though light years apart)

look at each other,

exchanging understanding glances

of what it means

to crack and peel.

Air travels the length

of Texas to fill my lungs,

which I can feel,

resigned and disintegrating,

having gathered

a rainforest’s

worth of oxygen

just to touch my ribs.

Exhaling a windstorm of air,

I roll, travelling an acre

to the end of my bed, and

allow myself to fall.

My feet hit the ground

with the momentum of a dive

from the top of Mount Everest.

Despite my growth, I don’t feel

the shortened distance of my

new height and the world,

out of thoughtfulness,

continues to encompass

the distance of infinity.

Traversing the distance

of the Sahara Desert,

I arrive at my desk,

and reach

(from the bottom of the Mariana’s Trench)

to grab my car keys;

holding them at armslength,

they might as well be on the moon.

The thought of traversing a tundra,

which covers the distance to Jupiter,

just to arrive at my car,

diminishes my wave of motivation and resolve

as quickly as it formed; my keys

drop from the Empire State Building

and land on my desk.

(I lean back

and plummet off

the end of

the earth.)

II.

The connection,

the plug, fixing my brain to

the rest of me,  requires

the world’s supply of extension cords.

Voices reach me as whispers.

I scream, knowing my friends ears

are too far away to hear me.

The bones in my fingers

slide away from one another:

tendons and muscle failing me; they stretch,

and then fall away.

I cannot bend my ankles; I have no

lungs that ask for air.

What purpose could such a body serve?

My bones, reaching the deafening quiet

that follows immense cacophony, splinter.

Disintegrating, the dust of my fossils

scatters as particles. My atoms find

no attraction in one another.

I am everywhere.

"Please don't go, please don't go

I love you so, I love you so

Please break my heart"

***

"I know because I've seen your footsteps, sometimes the road gets so dark, you forget what light was like.

I know, it's easy to forget that it's just the end of the day, not the end of you.

And if you'd let me walk with you, I'd tell you that it doesn't matter who you walk with, as long as you walk this road, well."

-"The Place I Stopped Briefly" (Source)