This time next week, I hope I will be breathing the air that I’ve been gasping for. I didn’t realize that four months could feel like four broken bones, two arms, two legs, all secretly cracked, only felt under the weight of my own invisible dread. It’s okay that I went back to being sixteen for awhile. It’s not what I wanted, what I planned for, but it’s what happened. I woke up with butterflies in my stomach and the rug ripped out from under me. My car sits in the driveway and I don’t drink coffee anymore because it makes me shake and I don’t know how to handle the shaking like I used to. I never used to worry about sharing drinks yet today I’ve washed my hands fifteen times and still don’t trust them. But it’s August and I’m twenty-three again. Or at least I will be when the key slides into the lock and I take that big gulp and pray for it to add a few years back that were taken away this summer. Everything is a circle cut in half, alternating between hollow and whole, snaking through time with hysterical pseudo endings and beginnings that are really just doors leading down a different hallway in the same ******* infinite hotel. Sometimes Wes Anderson’s, sometimes The Shining. I don’t have to listen to the yelling for the rest of my life if I don’t want to. I don’t have to be so unhappy if I don’t want to. Maybe next Saturday I will drive to the coffee shop on the corner and order something decaf and sugary and thank god that it’s over. It’s over. *******. The leaves will be turning orange soon. I almost forgot.

While my life is mostly bleak
You are my favorite day of the week
My lips against your cheek made me think
I could do it again

These ******* butterflies again
They will soon turn into moths
And eat me from within

I will pick you flowers
place them in your hair
And listen to you sing for hours

But will they wilt?
When the days don’t feel the same
Will you fill up with guilt?

When you are sick of me
And I’m not the one you seek
Anymore, you will still be my
Favorite day of the week

When someone else takes up
The space in your bed
And the moths are all dead

I will collect their carcasses
And wilted flowers
Then keep them in a jar
With a label that will say

“Tuesday”

It broke me down into mere morsels
Which will eventually
Be consumed into
The belly of the beast
Which is my beloved
Close-knit “society”
Of friends
Or
Who I thought were friends
Anyways


they will continue
To thirst and hunger
For my selfless
Appreciation and kindness
And in the end when
I am
Only bones
-After they have already picked my
Ribs clean-
They will peer into my
Empty chest;
That is the moment
They will know
I am finally gone

Then the thirst and hunger
Will come again
And they will in turn
Consume each other