Tonight, I cannot sleep because
I am too hot.
My face shines like wax
With sweat and oil
And the heat is like wet jellyfish in my clothes
And I must *** so I get
Up and when I see the dark me-creature in the mirror
I think of myself not as human
But blood and bones and fat and meat.
Just a biological fleshpile.
Chalk and butter and copper juice and pink slime hamburger.

I won’t turn on the light because I
Like to pretend to be blind when it’s dark.
I pretend that blackness is just water to swim through
And I feel my way to the can.
I leak yellow
And think of hospital catheters
And how I’m just a bag of warring fluids
Propped up on sticks.
I get up and vertigo swirls my brains
With an egg beater on low
Until my inner ear is quite confused
And I go whump on the sharp tiles like a dropped onion.
Before I flip the light switch,
All I can get through my greasy three-pound brain is
"Maybe it'll need an X-ray."

I slaughter
And mangle myself in this manner
Every five minutes.
All night.

I don’t want to be a thing that dies.