My Father Must Be Dying Even Though He is Already Dead

It is almost like the tearing away of the skin inside me. It is the birth skin, the skin inside my skin only turned inside out and wrapped around the nub of my core, as if to stop the bleeding. It’s old and nearly inaccessible from being shoved so deep into the hole of me.

I sit on the bus as it ambles through Beacon Hill. I stare out into early evening and reflect through the window as the neighborhoods spin past me. Something different has been raging inside me for months…something other than the usual shit. This one has more of a bite. It’s got a shorter fuse. It’s hotter and more highly flammable. I feel so toxic behnid it I’m surprised I don’t smell. Maybe I do. I don’t know why Kerry allows me. Sometimes she’s my own personal moving target and she’s starting to notice. I tell her over the phone after she has limped on to work one night after having fallen into one of my tripwires, "Listen, baby, bear with me. I'm either on the verge of a breakthrough or I'm about to have a break down. I'm trying hard not to land on you."

It makes me feel deeply damaged sick compulsive impulsive neurotic unpredictable unkind unsafe a threat to myself and others and I am struggling to keep my relationship with the world in tact. This is the year I’m having a hard time feeling the love.

What?


[to be continued]