Maybe you’re normal.
Maybe everyone feels like this.
Maybe everyone spends days hiding in their bed,
terrified of nothing and cringing at every imagined sound.
Turn off the lights, stop your ears and pray it goes away.
Maybe everyone tucks a ******* between their privates
(sticky pink lips leaking),
on grocery trips, bank errands, and late-night fast food runs.
Sometimes you just gotta feel a little something more than nothing, you know?
More than no one, more than Not Now, Babe, I'm Busy.
Not that you can.
How'd you let us get so numb?
What should take minutes, might take hours.
The ******* wasn't made to combat the all-powerful battery.
You should probably stop before
your pretty little ***** swallows up the toy in retaliation.
You’ll die from toxic-shock syndrome,
even after all those ******-box warnings, and when they cut you open,
the coroner will sneer derisively at the shiny rhine-****** pleasure bullet,
and your mother will blush and stammer
when they ask if she’d like to keep it in memory of you.
It’s so cute and handy
and it smells like pineapple jam...
Everyone should have one.
Maybe everyone cries on their way to work,
shaking and gasping because their hands gripped the steering wheel too tight,
and you knew you were a second away
from jerking your car into the oncoming vehicle
but you stopped yourself just in time,
and now you’re not sure if you’re more horrified that you almost did it
or that you still haven’t done it...
Maybe everyone needs things in twos or fours.
Not sixes, and never fives (unless it’s 10).
In pinks and not blues.
Oranges, not reds.
Oh god, never red...
In horizontal stripes or perfect tiny dots
each one an equal distance from the others.
You need colors arranged by ROY G BIV,
and big to small, A to Z.
Crunchy grapes and crustless bread,
washed hands and doors that open rightways inwards,
not leftways outwards.
You need buttons buttoned and laces tied.
You need straight lines and hip height,
You need perfect spelling and drawers that shut neatly.
You need lids that fit and matching earrings,
You need absolute silence and clocks that don’t tick.
You need dreaMT, not dreamed. EIther, not EEther.
You need speed limits and dress codes.
You need time frames and outlined lists,
you need to always see the sky outside and every door locked shut.
You need spoiled endings and expectations met because if they’re not
you want to scream.
You want to shriek and caterwaul.
You want to rip out your hair and scratch at your eyes, and you want to smear the slick juice of your ***** under your nose and throw your arms against the windows 'til you crack and bend. You want to **** in the mouths of everyone who ever told you Not to Fret because how could this happen, oh god, why could this happen, what did I do wrong? Why is it all wrong? Why is everything so wrong? Please help me, ****, help me! I can't breathe, everything is wrong and I can't breathe...
But maybe everyone is like that.
an excerpt from my book