The small miseries

Sept. 2025

It’s the small miseries that cling to the body like wet clothes, suffocating every inch of skin, sticking to it like a second layer of decaying flesh.

They fester, growing pungent from the indignity that you have not yet succumbed to them. But the choice is yours- endure it or let it engulf you.

Let them linger in hopes they fall off like dried fish scales, or claw at your skin until you feel raw flesh under your fingernails.

It’s the small miseries.

Reborn

Sept. 2025

I wish I could slip out of my skin the way I take off my jeans on a hot summer day.

I would gently tug at my corners to get them loose, unsticking the sweaty mess, uncovering the parts of a body I don't recognize.

I'd shrug off the old skin to the floor as if it were a layer of dried scales, and feel myself begin to expand- to relax, to breathe.

Slowly, I'd grab the crumpled mess from the ground and begin folding it on my lap, singing my departures and caressing its memory in my mind.

It would feel foreign in my barren hands. Its coolness leaving a ghostly chill within me. Perhaps I'd done this before.

I would lift it carefully, like a mother reaching for a child after it's just come out from within her- parting forever and becoming one all at once.

This silky material, my silky material, would have borne the heaviness I'd once felt in my heart. It would drag it down and keep it somber as it once had done to me.

I would heave it onto the chair overlooking the sea, and there it would await my return while listening to the crashing waves and tasting the salty air.

I would know I would come back to it, on a day when everything felt lighter, more bearable.

Only then would I let myself come undone. I would burst into a light beam, blinding all and illuminating a path into the sea.

There the sea foam would meet my stardust, and I would be home.

I sit, it sinks

Aug. 2025

I sit, stiff as a board, bloated like a dead fish. I sit and stare, but my eyes are glossy, my vision blackened. My teeth are clenched, my breathing thick, growing hot and bloody from the back of my throat. I sit as a wailing sound pierces my eardrums, and my body twists and writhes in pain, imagining a head-on collision. What better to collide with than the walls built around yourself?

I sit and hold my breath until the pressure in my head builds. I shut my eyes so hard I see stars inside myself, and I wonder how long I've kept this rage burning so fervently. Long enough so that all that remains of me floats in an ocean of scattered ash.

I hear nothing but the trembling of my limbs. I see nothing but the endless ocean before me. A coolness embraces me like a child, suffocating me in its grasp. I feel dazed, unsure of where to go where this emptiness won't follow.

This rage eats at me, scavenging through my body because it has found a home within these barren lands. I sit in silence and let it tear at me, leaving behind the scraps of what was once mine.

I sit, it sinks.

We both meet the same end.

Inevitable

2023

It's a clock, as it runs its finger down each shivering spine of all the sisters around this ring of wilted daisies. It gets closer to your turn. It crashes through them one after the other, its hand tainting, smearing, staining. It whispers with its cold breath, "You are mine now." They dare not move so as not to be noticed, but we can't stop time.

It's a carousel, round and round until it's your turn, and then hers, and hers, and hers and— You hold your breath and clench your fists; your feet don't yet touch the ground. Still, everyone is tall enough to ride this carousel, and your tears will dry up in the cold night air. It comes around and around until it's your turn again. You see them get on and off, up and down, round and round- it's coming for you now.

It's a running faucet. Your fingers prune as you try to close it. You try to stop the water from spilling over the tub. You don't want the water stains on your floor; those don't come off easy. But the water overflows with you inside, splashing everywhere. You bruise your knuckles trying to force the faucet to turn. You don't drown, but you wish you could.

It's a game of tag, but you don't know you're playing until you feel a hand bruise your arm— fingers squeezed into your skin, marking you in a way that will never truly heal. You should've picked hide-and-seek, but then again, you never had a choice, like the overflowing of the tub, like the ride on the carousel, like the ticking of the clock. You didn't know you were supposed to run until you'd already been caught.