She hammers out a heartbeat,
Clinging to its sound,
A constant noise to bind her,
To link her to the ground.
To keep her feet from slipping,
She follows it in time,
As though it were her duty,
Her singular design.

All she hears is beating,
Blocking other noise—
No tunes of trifling children,
No giggling girls and boys.
For noises are distractions;
They make a mess of minds.
Distraction likes the clutter—
Against her ears it grinds.

She holds fast to her heartbeat,
Latches to its hand,
But finds it too erratic,
Dribbly, like sand.
Up and down it dips and flies,
Makes her poor head spin,
Sending shivers up her spine
And tremors down her chin.

She’s lost her steady rhythm,
Lost hold of the sound,
The beat that duly held her
Anchored to the ground.
Her mind can’t find its footing—
It panics in its stead,
Lets inconstant rhythms
Muss her weary head,

Lets the twang of heartstrings
Orchestrate her cares,
And tangle with her fancies
And trip her down the stairs.
It sends her stumbling dazedly
Without a steady beat
To keep a constant tempo
And keep her on her feet.

She tends her bumps and bruises
Desperate, now, to find
Some steadiness to cling to,
To hold her glassy mind.
But nothing seems a constant
Except erratic sound.
What, then, can withhold her
From sliding off the ground?

What can keep distraction
From tearing through her head
And keep her fears from springing forth,
From crawling to her bed?
Can she fight this madness,
This urgent need to seek
Some constancy to bind her?
Or is she just that weak?

Clumsy words that don’t make sense
Prance from my besotted pen
Empty words, far too dense—
Why did I try to write, again?

Blankets cannot hold her
Her mind within her head
Sheets can’t keep her thoughts asleep
Can’t keep her in her bed
                She said
“I’ll sleep tonight, I promise,”
But sleep just slips away
Slides and glides from tired eyes
Dark circles that cheap makeup hides
Restless here
                —She’s tossing—
Restless fear
                —She’s falling—
Not asleep, just in too deep
In swirling thoughts, anxieties
“There’s no time to rest,”
She says
“It’s hard to be the best,”
She says
The best at what?
She wonders, dim
The best are gorgeous, fine and slim
Not fleshy with insomnia
                With dreams that bring cold sweat
Two hours of the night consumed
                Nightmares she won’t forget
“Don’t let it get to you,”
She says
But what she sees as true
Will always, always make it through
Through her mind, straight to her head
                She isn’t safe inside her bed
Dangling by her restless thread
Awake but far too tired, still
                Repose is not an option here
Fatigue is but a minor flaw
                And time is just her greatest fear
Chronophobic pillow fights
Erupt when she turns out the lights
Between her worries and will to sleep
“I just can’t win,”
                She mutters, soft
It’s hard to hold the world aloft
To play at night with dynamite
Awake while bed bugs surely bite

My words have left me here
I fear
Run off to find a worthy ear
They pranced away, my thoughts in tow
To trill their tunes
But I don’t know
The verses there
The verses here
Ripped out my hair
For you, my dear
I fear
My words escaped, crept lightly off
I was stuck to sigh and scoff
Calculating to derive
How to get out of this alive
I worried there
I worried here
Anxiety shares
The space with fear
Oh dear

I never meant to complicate
From a to b to integrate
Insanity
Profanity
And a **** near loss of humanity
Don’t you see?
There can be no stopping me
I burned right through with enthalpy

My words escaped this melted mess
Saved themselves from sheer distress
Spewed their logos to the masses
Ethos languished still in classes
The pathos far
The pathos near
Can’t hope to spar
With the letters here
I fear
The rhetoric isn’t clear
S, p, d filled up in line
The derivative was two roots of sine
The answer’s A
No, B
No, D
You’re all wrong
The answer’s Z

My words have left, abandoned ship
Now I’m stuck to sway and slip
The rigging’s there
The oars are here
The electrons are shared
The ideas won’t cohere
I fear
My words have left me here

The moonlight is a fickle friend
For it demands my time
Attention, too, it wants and needs
A receiver for its shine
Its beams keep my mind spinning
Too dizzy to decline
To go befriend the stars as well
To join the cosmic design
Alas, it's trapped me up again
Night can't be kept in line
I'll always be its dazzled slave
So sleep cannot be mine

You struggle with a corkscrew
I roll my eyes
We’re excited
Clattering glasses
Giggling
Scarfing Lay’s potato chips
Wavy, in case you were wondering
Like the hair that cascades
Over my shoulders
“Here’s to going behind my mother’s back!”
Cheers!
And we laugh some more
Even though my mind
Is protesting
You promise me fun
Lots and lots of fun
Because I need some
I agree
So down goes the bile
Already
It’s churning
Poisoning me faster than expected
My mouth is bitter
My stomach is too empty
My head is starting to swim
Down goes more bile
No use backing out now
I’m halfway gone
“To having fun!”
Cheers!
My hand trembles
Brings up the last of the bile
And down it goes
The room is unsteady
Or is that my balance?
Standing wasn’t such a good idea
So I fall back
Luckily there’s a bed
Was that always there?
“This probably isn’t a good idea…”
You assure me it is
So I guess I asked that
Out loud
I’m still talking
Whatever I said was terribly funny
For we’re laughing
Rolling around
As the room spins
Or is that just me?
You’re asking questions
I can’t answer you
My logic is indisposed at the moment
Stop asking me
Don’t ask me
Stop
Stop
I shouldn’t do this
My brain says it’s wrong
But it’s so soft here
And you say it’s fine, fine
No problem
No worries
No
A feeble protest
But I have no choice
Because reason is useless
And time just sped up
And I’m dizzy
Dizzy
Dizzy
What am I doing?
Slipping
Rolling
Writhing
Twirling
Reaching
Breathing
Spin­ning
Convulsing
Rocking
Losing it entirely
Up and down blur
My pulse is in my ears
Drumming in my head
Stop, stop,* stop!
My brain is shouting
Not right, not right, not right!
But it’s so fuzzy at the edges
So dizzy
And bitter
And bitten
And bleeding
Where’s my headband?
So disoriented
Can’t stop
Must stop
Not right
But so fun
No, not fun
Scary
Scary
Scary
No idea
What’s happening
Breathing
Too hard
Moving
Too fast
Boundaries
I need boundaries
Stop
Can’t
Hands in wavy hair
So tangled
Bruise-like marks
Hide them
Can’t let anyone see
Can’t tell
Must stop
Don’t leave a mark
Wait
Stop
No
What?
I’m
So
Confused
What’s
Happening?
Why
Am
­I
Doing
This?
Why
Can’t
We
Stop?
Must
Come
Down
So
High
Up
Too
Hi­gh
Up
So dizzy
So fuzzy
So woozy
Wobbling
Did I try to stand?
Let me down
Where are we now?
It’s green
So green
Leafy
Breezy
Walking—no, stumbling
Sit here
No, don’t start again
Must come down
Must retain reason
Must un-fuzz brain
Must stop

You promise me nothing will change

I slowly regain balance
The ground stops tilting
I’m shell-shocked
Realization crashes over me
Hits me
Knocks me over
And the guilt pours down
So bitter
Worse than bile
But I deserve it
I should have stopped
No, I never should have started
This changes *everything
Because I can’t face myself
With these memories
Running through my steadied mind

There was once a time
When I had my every moment
Pinpointed
Down to the very last millisecond
And I organized every
Scene
Memory
Idea
Emotion
Each neatly labeled, color-coded
Stored away in its shrink-wrap
So that I’d hear it
When I tried to look back
And I tried
I looked back over my shoulder
And saw you talking, laughing
And when they mentioned my name
You said, “I know her,”
So surely
Plainly
Confidently
And I laughed to myself as I watched you
For I knew you were wrong
True, you’ve met me
But
You don’t know me
You only know my soft spots
Where you poke and **** and jab
Watching me wince
As I try to tell you a story
My story
But you only half-listen
You haven’t the slightest inkling
That I am the strangest person
You’ll ever meet
And that I’ll never be anything you expected

You’ve found me predictable
And extend your hand
Knowing that I’ll stand here with my halo
And refuse it
So you keep your hand extended
Confident that I’ll never take it
Remembering that I told you
I can’t climb
And that I’m always scared
But you keep laughing
Thinking you’ve beaten me
Put me in my place
Forgetting that I have no place
I defy categorization
And the realization hits me as I look back at
All my neat categories
Where I tried desperately to fit my bits and pieces

I keep thinking I’ve found it
My spot in the puzzle
But I never quite fit
Not for long
Because you come around and reshape me
And I fit no where

I left a trail of bread crumbs
Hoping my past self would come find me
As I rocket blindly forward
Clutching my halo as I dodge
All my chances to live
While the Fates look on
Grinning with morbid satisfaction as they
Weave my sordid tapestry
Giddy with their knowledge of what is to come
As I stumble
Afraid of tomorrow
And never quite getting past today
Every day I’m tempted
To ****** the scissors from the hand of Atropos
And cut my thread before I can plummet
But you pry the scissors from my unsteady fingers
Knowing that I’m frozen in fear
Because I like the option of turning back
I hate you for it
Because I know tomorrow you’ll laugh at me
Thinking you know me
While I ponder your intentions
Driving myself crazy
Watching as everything I’ve ever done
Rears its ugly head
And all the words that have ever crossed the space between
You and me
Come up to haunt me
Driving me further and faster
Swirling
Twirling
Whirling
Spinning, spinning, spinning
Winding me up in this vortex
And I’ll never be able to stop
Because no one will try to help me
And you’ll watch on
As I blur ‘round and ‘round
My features blending with color-coded memories
While you brush off the stories I try tossing you
My regrets pull me by the hair
Sending me faster still
And you’ve forgotten me altogether
And it matters not whether you knew me
Because I’m going down, down, down
Pulling no one with me
Falling alone, with only my halo
And my fears
Still color-coded and shrink-wrapped
Wondering if I’ll ever get it right