if every bad feeling is a good feeling rotting
then it’s nothing bad. just love, just love
rotting up inside me. fruit gone too soft
and too sickeningly putrid and sweet.

my brother leaves. I get quiet. it gets harder
for me to quell the hunger and bide my time.
I wasn’t always an angry person, it didn’t
always hurt in this way. and I am wondering

when did I start to need something to
bite down on? if your brain really released
the right chemicals, does that count for
anything? does that make it a little real?

it’s a waiting game, at least, the way I play it.
and I can play it. outlast. still like a statue,
stone like grit in the river, wearing away
at the world without anyone noticing the

change in the seasons. fractures, hairline
in the little bones of wrists and ankles and
birds that could crunch like leaves underfoot,
if given the chance. keep your secrets, no one

wants them anyways. donate them to a
charity shop with a stolen pillow, pot,
pan, and knife used to dig at the expensive
vegetables and tender parts of other flesh

like the stomach. that betrayed you that
summer, twisted in agony while you sat in
the waiting room and a triage nurse spilled
your blood all over the crook of your elbow

and chair and cream tile floor. he said sorry
and you slumped down while you forgave him,
mostly hoping someone would forgive you too
for whatever you had done to make the pain so

tight and brilliant that you crawled under your
desk and called your mother asking what to do.
you never do that. she said so when you called.
the you walked to the hospital fighting to be

conscious but also hoping your body would
give in. sleep on the concrete until someone
found you and it would be over one way or
another. that didn’t happen. good probably

because in the city lots of people sleep on the
sidewalks and no one pays them any mind.
like how you never turned on the fan when
cooking in that cramped little kitchen and

clogged your sink with refuse from dishes.
waste is antithetical to your nature, but
so are lots of other things. you can ignore
without much discretion. you can hold

yourself up on your hands. almost. it’s
getting there and you like the dizziness
and the moment that feels like falling.
it reminds you of worse times, you like

to remember in your body and not just
your wretched brain. the brain that they’re
paying for, housing you here. how to square
these two things? you probably will in the

future. when you fly or fail and look back
able to see the cracks in the infrastructure.
until then, it’s almost over. don’t get angry
at your present circumstance until it isn’t any-