Been a long time since I’ve been a bird. Long time since I’ve choked on my own hollow bones, marveling again at such an incredible fragility supporting this unbearable gravity. Moments of splintering, this time there is no panic rising. Fingers and throat bleeding from this holding, and I witness it calmly.

Self-blind is self-absorbed, I recognize this truth. I don’t know how to skin myself further but I know how to withdraw. I know I don’t want to eat my own cruelty anymore. I know the monsters in my head look like you sometimes and I don’t know if that’s fair or not but I haven’t been able to outrun them yet.

I am deeply confused about so much of this moment that all I can do is nothing. That’s the right thing. No thing. I just want to be still without needing a noose to tether me. So far I’m not swinging. Not spinning in the wind. They say sit with your feelings but these motherfuckers are heavy and I am desperate for the light.

I can’t reach you and you’re not mine to touch and nothing is about me and I sit with that. With the ways I’m not allowed. Not to empathize or do anything I’m good at that doesn’t involve moving blood. Don’t even know if I’m good at the rest of it anymore because the moments that matter the most are the ones I fail catastrophically. I can save anyone even two degrees removed from the center but if I keep you any closer I’ll crush you. I’ll ruin it. Probably because I center it all around me. I think. I can’t see it, and I think that’s it.

I don’t want to be overwhelmed. I don’t want to be enabled or in need of rescue or reassurance. I want to do good. To do well. I still react too strongly. It still sits too close to my teeth to bite back too often. I watch her recoil and shut down and I have no idea how to reach her either. I feel myself creating new cycles she’ll have to break on her own and it’s as devastating for me to watch as it will be for her to fix it. If she can. I can’t fucking be this helpless, this wrong. It isn’t even ego, I want my baby to be okay. To love herself and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to dig her out from under her negativity and I see the ways I reinforce it. I don’t know what to do so I do nothing. Sit with it. Do I even know how to evolve anymore? Do I still know how to learn?

Moments of splintering and all I can do is watch. Pray the structure holds.