it has a name and it's a name i know. it's the name of the kid who moved in down the street when i only wanted to be alone and sleep all day, who they coupled me up with and forced me to play with. it's the lie they're telling my little sister. it's the prison that made my dad smash his hand down so hard he broke it.

it makes me think i'm back in my past, the worst year (that's ironic, because that year i had it all to myself). it makes the sunshine in late summer in the pacific northwest feel like autumn on the east coast, where too much sun came in through windows the size of a wall in a dorm that looked like a howard johnson's and was always too hot. or a time i can just recall clearly, when standing at the edge of the world made me cry unreasonably, unconsolably. and normally i like the still of fall, as things die and get quiet and light always slants at the perfect angle. but it makes fall into something unreal, and i lose my ability to appreciate it.

it makes everything suspect. it makes me numb and now i see the physical manifestation, loss of circulation, and my fingers and legs and toes tingle dangerously. but i only want more of unreality. i want to sleep all day. i want to lose myself in the words or the worlds of someone else, forget about the life that's mine.

but i deal with it better than most. once you know a thing's name, you control it. i see it in the periphery, and it waits patiently until i'm out of tasks, then pulls me close like a lover i've been sold to and it's easier not to struggle against the stinking embrace. it breaths its putrid words in my ear, tells me we'll be alone together forever, that we are each other's only love, that it will never let me go. i want to get away, but don't remember how.

i walk around unfeeling, and i hurt people and i make up a dangerous reality which temorarily pulls me back to awareness on a wave of adrenalin. i wait until it's gone, and hope it will be soon.