I said they weren’t real,
And you said they were.
I should have understood.

I realise now that I’ve always been one.
I guess it’s hard to see from the inside, too.
Whispering through the walls,
I can’t collide with anything.

In the daytime, I would cry if I had any me left.
Instead I float,
and speak in monotone.

Aimless.
I think I’ve crossed every bridge.
They ask what I’m doing and I say I’m
Trying to find where I left myself.

I’m lying, though.
I know where to find me,
But I can’t go there, so I float.
Pretending to search, but really just
Tracing and retracing old paths.

When I return home in the evenings, exhausted,
I collapse into fever dreams.
Begging the pillow to understand the intent.
My tears, percolating, soak into it,
the smell of salt makes me think I’m by the sea,
And I find a tiny bit of myself.
So I get addicted.

Dull circle.
The only improvement is that I’ve
stopped hesitating.
Even the bus drivers glance at me for slightly
Longer now.
It’s because I haven’t killed it yet,
that which drags from my back spectrally.
I’m not clinical, and I don’t know if I can.

And when I really do have to be somewhere,
and at least pretend to be on the ground,
I chill out by imagining that short time
when I was walking happily
With my head in the clouds.

As temporary as coffee, though.
More, actually.
It takes roughly 6 hours to process caffeine,
I can manage 5 minutes without flying away again.
I guess my head just wasn’t built for being a grown up.

So when you look down at me and your eyes speak libraries,
Just know that I understand the problem,
But the solution is worse.