You hold them all at arms length
and hug yourself into yourself
and you stand there, so remote,
so angry that everyone backs up
behind the yellow line.
And you sew yourself up
and put yourself in the freezer
and you don’t miss it,
don’t want it,
until there’s wailing in your ribcage
and you’re sitting, looking
at your own reflection
and it suddenly hits you
how pathetic it is.
So then it starts to scare you
and you feel it, tossing
restlessly inside you
and you want it to go back to sleep.
But what are you going to do,
because it’s frightening, really,
isn’t it and you’re not going to do anything.
You know it and you know it,
and you’re going to end up so alone,
and you know it and you know
you’ve done it.
So then you think you’re in the brown space,
slipping between the folds of the real and
hasn’t anyone ever told you there’s only
so much air to breathe in the liminal?
But you know it and you know
you’re going to be so alone
and maybe you deserve it
because you made it
and you know it.
So it scares you and you
don’t do anything about it,
because what’s life anyway,
but a game of trying not to
cry into books at train stations.