I have always managed to understand the motives of all emotions. Emotions of animals and objects and colors and places and of you and of me.

I’m not at sadness. Im sad at sadness. It knows nothing but itself and its duty is still fulfillment even if that fulfillment be to empty a soul.

A mosquito sucks out blood because it is a mosquito. I curse the mosquito. I hate the mosquito. But I understand it. I respect it.

I won’t appreciate all of the things I understand. I won’t accept all of the things I respect.

Love is one thing. Like is another. But anger? Anger is so perfectly prim and proper and precise that to use it on things that are merely being loyal to themselves is to fail to be yourself entirely.

I’m not mad at sadness. I’m just sad at sadness.

My own looks at me and frowns.

—

*a less than half draft of something unwritten*

it's agony now. it's not even sadness. it is straight fucking torture. unendurable. why? i don't know. perhaps i have become soft, weak, feeble. embarrassing. embarrassing. embarrassing. it is all that i feel. for many reasons. he hurts the most but he shouldn't. i suppose his neglect is really what hurts meaning that the pain i feel is unending sadness and humiliation at how low i am on the world's list of priorities, how easily i am and always have been forgotten.

the sadness envelopes me.

seals itself shut, too.

the loneliness i feel is banging pots and pans in my head and irritating the lump that never leaves my throat.

my tired hands are shaky and sad and they cant hold anymore. they cant grip. they can barely type.

the anxiety is overwhelming. it never ends.

none of this is poetry. none of this is prose. all of this is happening.

is everything okay?

yeah, all good.

it wasnt but he already knew that.

he knew that for weeks.

he knew that for weeks.

he knew that for weeks.

he knew that for weeks.

i knew he knew it and he knew that i knew that he knew it.

none of it mattered because

the next was "i hope so!"

what he didnt know was

that was the last time he'd ever speak to me.

i knew that for weeks. weeks. weeks. lifetimes.

i didn't want to though.

things are more different than ever before.

a new week will begin quite soon and for me it will be a new life. a new life inside this life. none of this is good. none of this is bad. none of this is even me.

maybe it will be. when the new weeks begin, that is.

the sadness pulls on the insides of my eyes and my throat and my ears. it hangs heavy off of my shoulder blades and eye lashes and collarbones.

cancer is a bummer. depression is a death sentence.

all of these things really are me. maybe when the new weeks begin, i will lose those parts. or even just lose life, altogether.

i hope for nothing but the end of this week and the end of the next one, too.

My right ear and throat ache. Reopening new wounds with old ways of destruction.

My right heart and arm ache. Rupturing new pain with old ways of instruction.

My right eye and mind ache. Remembering new stories with old ways of memorization.

My right now and then ache. Rectifying new moments with old ways of temptation.

I’m inside my shower head that’s inside my shower and I’m tired of all of the monologues. The dialogues. Or diary logs, really. The conversations. The questions, The answers. The revelations. The epiphanies. Who’s there, usually?, but me myself and I: the human diary of repeated scratches of words dressing up wounds.

My right ear and throat ache. Reopening new wounds with old ways of destruction.

My right heart and arm ache. Rupturing new pain with old ways of instruction.

My right eye and mind ache. Remembering new stories with old ways of memorization.

My right now and then ache. Rectifying new moments with old ways of temptation.

#unfinished

I am cold in the feet. Double socks but chilled. It’s the kind of cloudy right before the most gentle rainstorm. There is more Autumn in the air than the harsh Fall in my lungs. There is more beauty anticipated than forgotten by sunshine. There is more me than there is not.

I am the sleepiest kind of wired. Anxious but silent. I am static in a room devoid of movement aside from the pendulum on the clock. Is that what it’s called? Either way, the thing is ticking to the same beat of the bomb in my soul.

My feet are kicking. Fidgeting. The same cold feet. I half mutter the words I type. My right ear and throat ache. Reopening new wounds with old ways of destruction.

I have been yelling at myself in silence for all of my life and somehow all of the scolding has only resulted in more moments of fidgety cold feet dangling off chairs with every toe screaming I am still so very sad and every leg of the chair squeaking back with oh, but being frozen without feeling isn’t all that bad.

It’s rainy and the raindrops are nice to me. I see them smile with a sadness we have always bonded over. I return the smile with eyes that reflect each of us back at each other — all of us only seeing our own reflection.

The rain, its comforting. It’s the arrival of the beauty. It’s the weather I know well and a feeling I know even better; it’s a truth I love true and a loyalty I love even better. My cold feet thaw at the arrival of the very first teardrop of the clouds. My frozen toes tell the legs of the chair, I can’t remember what lonely feels like anymore! and every leg of the chair squeak back with eyes rolled, you said this last time, always forgetting the sun will come back like before.

I look to my feet and remind them that in the midst of each rain, loneliness is who gets cold feet.

So, I take my socks off. One layer, then the next. I mean, why keep them on when my feet are sweating?

The hatchet yelled at me. I knew he was walking around my bed, sizing up my throat but I didn’t want to pay him any mind. He yelled that I’d pay it anyway. I’d have to pay him every part of me. All the parts he felt like and then tomorrow, when I wake more dead than alive, I would bury him with my own body, happy to allow him to yell and jab and slit and kill me for the rest of time. I can still hear him yelling but i left my eyes closed because he hated that the most. I refused to pay any mind at all. Cause my mind was mine, dead and alive, so had he demanded that I pay it, I’m afraid I’d already be at customer service looking for a refund. I’m afraid life’s policy doesn’t require a receipt.