speechless

i am here still but my head is empty and each day is a slow and unbearable decade. i cannot move right in this melancholy. attacks of panic and faintness à midi, après-midi, whenever i am not at home. i do not sleep well at night. i nap because i need to get out of here for a while, to someplace else where there are different rules and laws of physics. where i am not so heavy nor so weary. because the day is just too long and i do not have such stamina. waking is no longer preferable to my bizarre dreams.

i am crumbling, but i am still here. appointment after appointment lined up, money slipping out of my wallet almost unnoticed in an attempt to corral my unruly brain. i am beginning to feel like a lab rat again. this is where i run far away and become someone new, someone whose eyes do not betray sadness in the late afternoon sun. someone who is able to function. someone who is not thrown off kilter by the question how are you?

as of now i sidestep a bit and look askance and chant je vais bien, merci, et vous? just as i have said it a thousand times in class. when i do not think of the meaning i can get it out. rehearsed. no one knows. i laugh easily and smile and keep my own secrets, so long as you do not catch my eyes in the declining sun, at that golden time when it's low in the sky and steeping the hills and penetrating our closely held truths.