I do not know how the fashionable people of the past did it.
How were they able to sit still for hours on end?
Shouldn't having money mean doing more?
For I've found that if I sit around for too long,
I stagnate like water, I thicken like blood.

I need to move, need to run in order to breathe,
Need to laugh in order to feel like I exist at all.
Without the confirmation that is my own beating body,
My own moving heart, I might as well fade away,
Might as well be a pixel of static on a TV screen.

In the early morning hours as I lie awake in bed,
I can feel myself slipping away into nothing.
I know that if I lay there long enough I will melt
Into my blankets, and cease to exist.
Most mornings I force myself to move,
Force myself into movement, back into existence!

But some dark rainy day, too soon I fear,
I will lie back on the pillows
and let the sheets take their toll
and I will die even as I live:
stagnant like water
thick like blood.