Psychosis on a London-Bound Train

 Maybe we will wake up to the silence
Of shoes at the foot of the bed not going anywhere.

Richard Seiken, Dots Everywhere

The forlorn shores, salient, grey, where I once walked hand in hand with my father, my small feet bare, coated with sand and nascent brine. The snarling, curling waves, the screams of the salt-bitten wind: my mind is an open grave. I am awake.

Yearnings that tighten like a noose, a flood of flesh, that scalding choice. And gone. Another thread is wrenched from the loosening fabric of this sanity, this will to be. No time to think, not even to mourn, no, not with the fighting and fucking and burning and dying–

I haven’t felt like that, no, not ever, no never again, and again, and again, always, my head collides with the unforgiving floor, again, again, this is my fault, chunks of hair are pulled out, she excoriates them, my forearms torn and howling beneath her teeth, her nails, my exposed back covered in strange, dull impressions of high heeled shoes and accusations—they drag her off of me, still screaming.

The scene fades. I am awake again. Alone. In a bathtub filled with little white pills. No. No, it is empty. The bathtub is empty. A trick of the half-light. Empty. Knees pressed to my heaving chest and cigarette ash across my lips. Empty.

This blood that stains me is not mine; but it is everywhere. The floor, the walls, these clothes, under my fingernails. It will not come off. Now it is me, screaming wordlessly. I wake up on my side, the floor is cold, I am three paces from the bathroom door. I do not know where this dream ends and the real nightmare starts. I somehow claw and crawl my way into an unmade, unfamiliar bed. I disappear.

Yes, I vanish with the sun, I do not look back. I do not pretend to care. I do not know who I am writing to. I do not know what is real. Everyone can see me, wherever I am. They are watching me now. I catch a glimpse of you at the train station. Younger, like I remember you. Oh, god, I am losing my mind. My hands are trowels, for all the good it’s done me, shoveling back bits of rock and bone, I claw at the earth, break my knuckles against its surface, I dig deeper. I want to get back, back, back to you, I want to join you there, but I am bound to this life like Prometheus to his fate, and you are the chains, the best and most savage ultimatum.

There is a pressure above my forehead: a dawning, livid bruise. I remember my head hitting the floor. And again. Should put concealer on that. Hide the mark. Keep hiding. Always hide. Vanish. Un-become. I am in free fall. I am falling always. I keep dreaming that the skin has come off of my hands and face. That is not at all what it feels like, but it comes far nearer to what I really mean.

I wrote the letter, you know, my love. Expect it soon. I will not burn this one before you wake. Those days are over. I will leave it for you, unaffected. And then you will be gone and that will be everyone and I will be alone. The way I am supposed to be.

But this did not happen, no, none of this happened, the friends I once had are still with me, his death was a dream in the underside of my soul, the scars and the bruises and the claw marks are mere fiction, her vicious attack a faint shriek of nonbeing, the funeral time is not ever, the train will stop at no station at all, and nothing is real now but me.