litany

sometimes i am made of windscreen glass that shatters in the cold.

sometimes i am fine and i am tired of caring, of keeping up with this game i have been playing, and i say, no, i am healthy, i am fine, let me eat.

sometimes i pretend i am fine and tell other people a thousand ways to be fine as if i really were fine and as if i knew better than they do. 

sometimes i am embarrassed. ha. that is a joke. i am always embarrassed.

sometimes i am a child playing grown-up, tripping along in her mother's high heels, lipstick smeared across her face. 

sometimes i am that child, hidden in her mother's closet, face pressed to the silk and wool and cotton, warm and safe and hidden, refusing to come out. 

sometimes i am made of ten thousand shifting pieces that reform and break and fuse again and sometimes shatter across the floor. 

sometimes i will not let anyone get too close. i hold myself at arm's length so as not feel what i really feel. 

sometimes my heart beats too loudly and i am afraid it will betray my secrets. sometimes it spills out too much and too fast and i go glassy-eyed in panic. 

sometimes i am made of a pale, dim light, shifty and ephemeral, feigning silhouettes but defining naught but ashen shadows.