If air contained calories
Would I stop breathing?
Or would I start panting like a dog?
Or, maybe, would I just continue breathing because – after all – it doesn’t matter anymore?

Society’s supermarkets selling you lies,
Sweet and savory because the truth is tasteless.
Words prepacked in plastic boxes,
Their best-before-dates washed out because they've already expired yesterday.
Keep smiles frozen so they’ll never run out of stock.
And rotten teeth and brittle bones have never been so popular before.
Coat-hanger-shaped torsos on the meat counter,
And skinny spider legs on sale.
High-heeled and suntanned and bleached and naked
Spineless with bony spines and hollow eyes
I can see them every day running through the hall
Only to grab that one last piece of beauty.

I’ve got those pants which used to hug my legs very tightly, some time ago
They were warm and comfortable and they’d snuggle up to each other

But today exact these same pants refused to recognize my legs
They started to let go of them

They observe them now, from a distance, and give them a strange look
They’re scared to touch my legs

They’re scared of those cold and sharp bones
Scared of the blue skin and of my fine hair on them

Bones cold and sharp, which used to be my legs, have become crutches
But they work
Bones, cold and sharp, which might snap in half with every movement
But still they’re whole

And like ghosts, invisible, I walk with those crutches through the hallway
Cross the streets of my hometown
And go for a run every now and then
I get past windows that show no reflection
Past people who look at me in disgust

And when I’m home, the pants slip off by themselves
So that I stand here, naked and barefoot and exposed without any cloth
Only to lift those cold and sharp bones one more time
To make a step forward
Onto a scale which will measure my self-worth in kilograms and make my bony knees wobbly again
Because suddenly, the pants fit again, suffocating my legs with their tightness.

These days I am amazed
How this tiny apartment
Suddenly contains so much space
Vast, like an ocean
I am drowning in endless spheres

I am thinking about how we didn’t even fit a couch into it
How you threw away your old shoes
How I buried mine under pillars of clothes in the cellar
How the walls hugged us at night
How our hopes and dreams tried to escape the window
How we didn’t let them
How we wanted to adopt a cat so badly
How we were afraid the walls would swallow it

But this morning I woke up,
Sheets like a large blanket of snow
A heavy silence weighing me down
So much air but so little breath

I barely saw the end of the room
Just a dark tunnel where there is no light at the end or anything at all
Just me and is ridiculously large space
Suffocating me with its infinity

I recovered your stuff from the cellar
Hung your pictures on the wall again
Even put up that ugly shelf you used to love

But no matter how hard I tried to fill the room
The floor just soaked in everything
And there was only so much space

You once told me that 16.6  percent
is the risk of firing a bullet into your head
when playing Russian Roulette.

And I wonder,
Does that make you a 16.6 percent suicidal?
I never knew you were a gambler,
And I wonder,
how much risk are you willing to take?

What will it look like,
when you’re holding that gun against your forehead?
What will your brain think,
that one millisecond before the fire hits you?
What will your tiny heart feel,
right before the bullet smashes your head into pieces?

Will you be counting your debts?
Will you ask for just one more chance?

But let me ask you-
What happens when the fire hits you
and you haven’t decided yet?

Someone knocked on my door the other day
A woman I didn’t recognize
Long limps, tiny frame
Her eyes pierced right through me and it hurt
Her fingers were ice-cold when she touched me
Pushing me away to enter the room
She examined the kitchen, the sink, the fridge
And I could only wonder what she was looking for
For a second I thought that she might be hungry
But her lips were pressed so tightly together
That I forgot about it immediately
When she looked into the mirror she saw me standing right behind her
And in a state of both frustration and excitement
I kicked against the glass with my foot
And it was not the glass,
But the woman,
That broke.

Glimpses of memories from a past life
Shadows of my yesterday hanging on my walls, like spiderwebs
The wild intoxicated air has faded away
My living room smells like ordinariness and spring now
Trying to catch old feelings, like a fever
What would I give to feel what I used to feel again

We were not just stars, we were a galaxy
The electric feeling, the heat, the rush
My dilated eyes, my dehydrated body moving and moving
And moving
The shaking fingers, the thirst, the mass oh the overwhelming mass of feelings
Feeling both excited and angry at the same time
Feeling it all, ever so intensely
Tasting love, hatred, rage and despair
My body was a boiling *** of sensations

It was raw and real
It was us, the big city and the night sky
It was us standing on the roof
We didn’t care if we will fall
We didn’t care if we will fly

We dived into the dark black night so deep we forgot about the concept of time and space
It was like ripping out the stars with our bare hands
It was like swallowing an ocean
Sometimes it was an attempt to drown
Sometimes we let the waves carry us away
Sometimes we became the waves

Now it is only me, sitting here, alone, in my living room
Trying to find purpose in zoom meetings, writing emails and harvesting my own chilies.
Not sure whether the pills make me numb
Or let me feel again
Because it’s all the same to me
The night sky is not black anymore, it’s grey
There are no more oceans to drown in anymore
I am wearing a life vest now
These pills are different
They don’t taste like life or energy
They taste like defeat and surrender

It was May when you passed over
From this life onto another
Dividing yours and mine into two seasons
warm summer nights with you
cold winter days alone
Taking with you my ability to feel
Taking with you my boldness
Taking with you my appetite

I could say I am sorry,
But I am not.
Because on the one hand it is a choice,
(But then again it isn’t.)
It’ll take me 3 months and 22 days,
a caloric deficit of 700,
7 hours of gymnastics a week,
half an apple instead of one,
skipping lunches three times a week,
discipline, motivation and strength,
but one day, I will be where I want to be.

I have a goal, a very specific number,
and as for now, it’s all just in my head,
and –actually- I’ve never really liked numbers ,
in school I always hated maths,
but - since I’ve started measuring every inch of happiness,
since I keep my feelings locked up in measuring cups,
I cannot imagine living without them anymore.
It feels good to have a goal again.

So, when I pinch my skin,
and cry myself to sleep at night over a *******,
when I hate myself for being myself,
I could say that I am sorry,
to me, to anyone.
But the truth is, I am not.
Not yet.
I still have a goal to finish.

Your soft skin is pale and transparent
A no longer beating heart is portruding as if it was so to say: let me finish this.
There wasn’t a chance to finish, you left undone
Your skin still so translucent and clear
Your blue lips sealed as if they were to say: Please be gentle.
You shot yourself in the chest so that your face will remain beautiful
And yes – you’re beautiful as you’re lying there on a cold metal table
Soon scissors and knives will rip open your abdomen and examine what you left behind
Maybe your liver will tell them the stories of how we met at a bar and how you loved drinking too much wine
Maybe your lungs will reveal that – sometimes, when you were mad at me – you smoked cigarettes
Maybe your mouth will speak about that one time we kissed at the cinema for the whole film
Maybe they will forcefully open your eyes to see if you’re still watching
I hope that when they sew you up again, they’ll leave a tiny crack in your chest for your soul to leave
Let it fly out the window and watch sunsets with me

Yesterday I had someone clean your room
The police came and took some things with them
They took your suicide note with them, for the file they say
You’re a file now
They asked about the ****** blanket
And I told them you wrapped yourself into it so that your ****** torso wont make a mess
Which is kind of funny because the mess really just started when they took the blanket and left me there, alone, in an empty room.

I licked you cautiously with precision
Licked until your sharp edges were round and soft
Indulged in that millisecond, I let my mind wander off to the imagination of licking and actually swallowing you
Sweet imaginary drops of melted sticky sugary matter were dripping down my esophagus
You were dancing in my throat like a delicate ballerina
Tiptoeing, Floating.

Then reality hit in again and my tongue drawed back like it just touched a hot range
My esophagus felt clogged. Your pungent taste was burning holes into my throat-
So I used my fingers like a plunger to **** you out again.

I purged dark matter all over the white bathroom tiles
Tried to extinguish salty burning tears with stomach acid
You smelled sweet and savory at the same time.

I’m sorry for drowning the rest of you in the toilet.
But they say “nothing good ever lasts long enough” for a reason.
You see, love is a battlefield and I’m Napoleon.

The hole in my heart is only as deep as the void it contains
The void which is full of your absence and full of my emptiness
I wish you could carry it for me just for one day
Lift the weight off my shoulders
And put it in your pockets
Take out the emptiness
And fill it with only air
Breathe me in, absorb my grief, exhale the toxins
Isn’t that how the body works?
Pour out my tears
I will donate a pool to you
**** out my sorrows,
I assure you, I can live without.
Carry my heart and teach it a lesson in healing,
That’s what you’ve promised anyway.
Shape the edges, draw circles, switch on the light.
And when you’re done I’ll willingly take back that heart
And transplant it back into my chest voluntarily.
But as for now I’m lacking space.

It’s funny how seeing things from a different perspective can make such a difference
When you look out of the window of a plane and you can see your tiny house
And the city is no bigger than your thumb
And cars on the highway look like ants running from point A to point B
And people so tiny you can’t even see their faces
But then, when you’re back on the ground
You feel like a tiny insect yourself
In a city so big it eats you alive
In a house where the walls swallow you
On streets surrounded by people whose faces you cannot escape
On the subway when it turns from empty to crowded to empty to crowded again
When you look up to the bright yellow ceiling and imagine sunlight
When you get off at your station
And everything looks the same
Exactly like when you got on the train this morning
And like yesterday, and the day before
And how nothing will ever make this stairs look different
No matter what angle you’re looking at them from
Because when you’re on solid ground and not in the sky
Putting things in perspective is so much harder

I’ve started a journal, about things that made me happy today, when really it should be things that kept me from killing myself today.

So I think about why today is not the day, on which I should end my being here, why today is not the day my light will be switched off.
I think about the advantages of not existing. On how easy everything would be. I wouldn’t have to get out of bed every morning, in fact I’d NEVER have to get up ever again. I could just lie there, not even making an effort to breathe – because what difference would it make?

I could spent my time just being nothing, feeling nothing, drowning in air and thoughtlessness for the sole purpose of wasting my time in a place where no time exists. I imagine my head just cooling down, like a laptop shut off after using it for a long time. I can almost feel the heat leaving my body, leaving my brain. I can feel my body getting cold and stiff and how my muscles just let go. They wouldn’t even try. No spasms or anything. They’d just drop to the ground in total exhaustion, thankful for not having to function anymore. My eyes closing, my mind in peace. No darkness or bad feelings, just a void. Floating into a vast nothingness.

It’s a nice thought. So, what is it that keeps me from giving in?

I don’t know. I don’t know why my body or better yet my mind keeps me alive, refusing to enter the state of total stiffness. Maybe there’s still movement, somewhere. Maybe it is because today I saw a grey cat which didn’t run away when I tried to touch her. Maybe it was because she had very soft fur and she purred and she gave me a blink with her eye when I looked at her. Maybe it was because I’ve catched the last train without running, even if I was already late. Maybe it was because the weather forecast predicted heavy rain in the afternoon but the sun just stayed all day.

I don’t know what makes my heart pumping blood day after day, what makes my lungs breathe second by second. I don’t know how this body works, but as for now, I think there must be reason.

I hate the sun today because I feel like she betrays me,
Clearing the snow, making the birds sing, shining brightly into my bedroom
While my body is raining tears like a waterfall and my chest feels heavy and grey
How can such a bad day be so beautiful?
I am angry at the weather because it’s been raining for weeks
And now that you’re gone the air is dry and humid again
I cannot grasp the irony of this.
All I wanted for you was just another beautiful day to live
No more dark clouds and ***** snow
Just one more ray of sunshine touching your face through the window
Just one more morning coffee on the balcony, mild spring temperatures and crocuses.
One more of our Sunday strolls without an umbrella
One more night with our summer bed sheets.
I want to close the windows and bury myself under pillows
I want the birds to shut up
I want the weather to act appropriately
I want you to be here again, because it’s such a beautiful day and I can’t take it alone.

I swallowed fire
Hoping it would burn me from within
I was screaming in pain
But when I tried to hold back the tears
The flames just drowned inside my eyes
And I could feel nothing again
And I don’t know what’s worse

Trigger Warning you scream before pulling the trigger
Trigger Warning, again, you scream
And I can only wonder
When is a warning a warning?

When someone leaves, what remains?
An “in memory of” on Facebook, a black-and-white profile picture, a last post with 360 likes, a music video
8 unread WhatsApp messages, 1 grey tick instead of 2 in a group chat
Nocturnal analysing of your social media accounts, finding truth in between your Instagram captions
Your last statement to the world, a peace emoji just above said music video
The question if this is what peace looked like for you
The question if it really was peaceful
The question what crossed your mind, 1 millisecond before the world before your eyes turned into a black void forever
The question when you thought about becoming a memory for the first time
The question when you thought about becoming a memory for the last time
The question where souls, if they exist, go when someone dies
The question what state of aggregation souls have
The question if you’re now air, soil or both
A cold shiver when I find the ad for your room, published 4 weeks ago. You were always looking ahead.
Your books and files meticulously arranged in one of the pictures, neat as a pin
The question how it must have had looked inside of you. Was it the chaos or were you tired of cleaning up? Did you have windows, could you see outside? When someone knocked, did you open? When did you realize the light switch? When did you decide to turn the lights off?
When someone leaves, what remains?
An empty room
Unread messages
People reacting with that crying emoji on all your posts
Memories
Things you’ve left undone
Anger, sympathy, maybe someday absolution
Anguish, fright
Thoughts about your family
Good reasons, bad reasons
Philosophy
Compassion
An obituary in the local newspaper
An iPhone with no battery
A voicemail leading directly into nothingness
An as good as new e-piano, only 5 weeks old
A rancid peace of butter in the back of your fridge
Administrative workload
An incomplete mission
Questions without answers.

Whenever you’re ready
To get up, to leave.
Whenever you’re ready
To close the door, to miss the train.
Whenever you want,
I’ll leave a window open for you
that – if you want
You can step outside, into the night
First one step, then another.
You, leaving my apartment,
without me even recognizing,
while I’am asleep.
A gentle breeze
I barely notice
Then you’re gone.
I surrender!
Run!

sitting in my bathtub
lights dimmed low
in my hand a glass of wine
what if the water is my undoing?

it’s one of those days
on which I cannot grasp the concept
of a world without you
it’s one of those days
on which I realize
that my life has been separated
into two seasons -
warm summer nights with you
cold winter days alone.

I put my head under water
the wine glass still in my hand
trying to hold my breath a little longer than my lungs allow
imagining that I could become the water
imagining I could pour my body on the floor

And yet, my body wouldn't float
so I pour the wine into the water instead
it becomes red
and I realize
that wine
under water
will not float
but dissolve.