or, maybe, i am/hoping/that they/will.

i’ve got panic in my bones, it seems,

building up so rapidly and it won’t

stop

filling

it’s constricting, from the inside out

pressing up against walls that feel so thin

pressing up so hard it feels like they’ll burst, soon

my spine feels rigid against thick-pale-worn-leather skin

like poking spears from the inside, a warrior

standing close in between my ribs

clothes are becoming too tight, again

chest is far too large for shirts that felt all right last month

when will i stop growing? when will i feel as though i fit,

inside my skin? is not my skin a home,

for the bones and organs and the blood inside?

except it feels like great big caverns stuck inside

thin thin thin walls

and the ghost of grief drifts between,

through hallways and rooms and up to HQ,

where he operates on a dusty-cobwebbed-rusted control system,

spinning wheels when he so decides and

cranking bars up to their highest extent, this is when i feel exhausted at the surge of

energy,

the ghost of grief shoves levers up and down and sends telepathic messages to smaller workers,

the snails of loss and hummingbirds of fear,

and then the ghost of grief sits back and maybe

maybe maybe maybe he grins with crooked white teeth lined up oddly on crooked

white jaws, while he watches the snails of loss slither over dry dry dry bones

until they reach the fingers, where they type words inside small boxes and say,

‘hello, i am doing fine; how are you?’

and the ghost of grief might grin while he watches the

hummingbirds of fear flit round and round and round

my head and round round round the place where my heart supposedly lies

and he’ll watch as these birds will spin me so far down into

great big tornadoes of SELF-HATE and into the large crashing waves of

THE WORDS THEY DON’T SAY (BUT, OH, THEY MUST MEAN) and even into

the CRACKS IN STABILITY made from earthquakes shaking me on the outside,

almost as much as how much i am shaking on the inside.

but the ghost of grief will walk down from HQ late at night,

and he will say, ‘a job well done, today, a job well done, i think i’ll say!’

and he will stand tall in between by ribs, like a great big man coming in for a hug

because he is so large that that is the only place he’ll fit

and he’ll take up his big, old spears

and he will array them in such a way that they will point my spinal cord

in odd ridges poking out of my skin

(as they are doing right now)

and he will close his eyes,

and he will sleep--

as i am unable to do, with snails of loss and hummingbirds of fear still

slithering and spinning inside of me.

the ghost of grief will sleep,

and i will try to close my eyes,

and fight off the fear of the coming day

with very weary arms and very weary swings,

until i will fall, to the ground,

unable to keep do anything more than

lie with eyes wide open and hope the vultures don’t pick me dry

(drier than i all ready am).

or, maybe, i am

hoping

that they

will.