The Anxious Poet

It’s like a mirror reflection of last year—
refraction—
choking on my own tears, a projected me shaking the
screen, shuddering,

thoughts like a train station: one
in
one
out
we hit a quiet station once—
you leave—
I slip my hand
close—and then the oncoming traffic of thoughts
swallows me
whole—

hollow—
curetted. scrapings in a tray.
a click of suction, then a pull.
you lift what’s left in plastic palms, blood-bright.
they look small.
still— rude-stitched or careful-placed—
I need them.

that sterile smell infiltrates my senses—
sterile seeps—
the bright white—
not bright, no,
but blinding in a specific colour, a
sensation: white with a noise to it, a frost under the eyes.

I call it Off Mode when I go back there—
faces on standby; the taste of latex gloves bitter on my tongue—
and every time, every thought-train automates until
it hits a—
Limit.

Limit.

I never know where it is—
like when you don’t see a candle go out
until you’re questioning why it’s dark—
a slow ploughing of my mind, turning under
before new experiences,
thoughts,
can form—
and here I am, grasping the seeds with my calloused hands,
begging them,
cradling them like my own kin,
whispering sweetened memories of better springs—
harsher winters slice the words short.

Talk, they say.
It fixes it.
If my pockets were heavy with gold,
perhaps my words would weigh as much—
rare, pared—
but my pockets are light with dust; the dust won’t spend,
won’t stick.

Time is a healer, they say—yet time keeps eroding any chance of
healing—
salting
the wounds I cannot reach—
time the cool hand with the salt tongue,
heals and unseals—
and I open where I can’t quite reach.

Term again. The ward charges me a toll—
refraction—
one in, one out—
the quiet station, escalator hum—
Limit.
The latex on the tongue.
The white that vibrates in my teeth.
Seeds in my palm.
Talk, they say.
Dust.
Gold.
The nurse called Time presses the dressing and it sings.
The song is salt.