4:47 AM

A timid hand touches me where few ever touch…

Hello…hello? Do you have a moment?

I turn away, my heart excruciating squeeze of pain so long-present it has to find new ways to make its presence felt at every turn.

I am sorry to bother you. I know we are busy but I am having a very hard time right now.

I swallow hard, baffled tears clamoring to life, breath close and precious in my lungs.

I need to walk tonight.

My head shakes and I’m breathing through repeated slamming waves of mallet-blows destroying a wall within myself convulsions and choking as for ten, maybe twenty seconds it pours out. Dark energy, bluehot exultation, curdled blood, rage and fear and confusion and finally sadness.

It is hard to breathe in there.

The voice is a quiet quicksilver blade forged of longing and need and loneliness rives me again and again each syllable rending the deceptively strong barrier we hold. Breath shudders in my chest. My body starts to shake so strangely I throw back the tangled sheet and discomposed blanket, placing feet on the floor and walking in the dark to try to get back in my

I know you know. I am so sorry to bother you.

body which is actually

But please.

not where I want to be right now because it

It is so hard can’t we just…talk?

…hurts.

I can’t answer. I won’t answer. I have no answer.

Sorry. I’ll just…I didn’t mean to make things worse.

Abrupt, breaking sobs fight their way to air and the cries are ugly to my ears. Ungraceful

I’ll go back I promise I just need to know you haven’t forgotten me.

I claw at my face slick and hot, watching projected in my heart the rubble and smoke of a barrier destroyed…again…and a voice a touch palpable on my body flinches me to the wall in the dark feeling my way

Please don’t forget. I don’t want to perish and every day it feels like…you know. Like I’m dying a little bit more.

to the bathroom, inhaler grabbed and shaken lungs squealing out air to slowly inhale a puff to help the oxygen exchange do its thing

I am sorry. I really am. I will…I try not to bother you. It is…it is the last thing I want to do. Cause more pain.

and I breathe, stretch. Let the tears fall, silently now. I feel the violent rupture soften to a reproachful gravitational pull of sorrow, a cistern of emotional solitude that silently collects tears

Don’t let go. Don’t give up on me.

and we, tide-beached fish gasping on land flopping in rage because how can I just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming swimming swimming when there is no….fucking…water…

The Demon The Hyena eyes glimmering from the periphery teeth bared shakes her filthy head

You know, that shit is pretty pathetic. It would probably be healthier smarter betterfasterstronger if you just gave up on that maudlin, creepy, pathetic bullshit.

I am empty now…cold. Neither dead nor alive, lonely but Lord Ganesha knows not alone how can we be alone with such a cast of characters and I look us in the face, my Demon, and breathe.

It might be that you are right. You have been right before. I am sure you will be right again. But I am not ready. Not today. Not yet. I will keep her safe until I find a way for her to walk again. I owe us that.

The Demon is not sentimental and Hyena are patient like a river against a mountain and she lopes off leaving me to clean up the mess and close that portal to myself I avoid opening at all costs and hear the whisper of that voice that claws at me again but as from a distance an enervated echo I let pass through me I close my eyes envision a closing, a wall going up, stone by stone, cement, mortar, bricks, beams, iron bars, rebar, fuck it, poured cement…I imagine it all sealing up the crack that allows the invincible gentleness, the fierce fearsome power, the impossible persistence of my submission escape, break out, pull me apart with longing, demand surcease, because the need to submit, the desire to be owned, the facet that will not be complete without its counterpart is mine to protect and keep until I find someone who understands it, wants it, needs that level of focus and ferocity to complete their own circuit. To boost their own signal.

Until then I stand before a wall newly rebuilt.

Listening to the whisper of my own slave’s voice echoing without surcease from its entombment.

Waiting.

Waiting imperfectly, but doing the very best I can, guarding the inestimable, imprisoning the ineffable, praying for a miracle, waiting one more day.