Sometimes I feel like the last abstract puzzle piece; set apart and waiting for the edges to be correctly aligned and the centre filled so that I can finally and inevitably be slotted into my right place.

Then I am drawn to the size of the puzzle and the way it seems to shift and shunt and change - and I know that one day I will realise with my whole soul that there are an infinity of pieces and I am not an end.

On another, more distant day I will no longer be afraid of this and will come to see it as beautiful.

But for tonight I will continue to feel incomparably small and foolish and alone. I will neglect my bed for a dusty throat and caffeine because the thought of being there and today passing away without me chokes my every action. I will endlessly run my tongue against the back of my jagged teeth until it cuts and swells. I will lay, paralysed, on the cold linoleum of the kitchen floor and hope something other than time will swallow me. I will continue to think of my friends far away and adventures we never, but could have, had.

For tonight it is okay.

There's pleasure in these small thoughts, like a slow waltz fading out, the last note hanging above my head; a blade that cuts apart the looming silence.