numb

I can feel my bones. They creak and groan like a rusty door hinge, no soft connections to ease them. My flesh and muscle, my sinew down to the bone is lifeless. I'm a skeleton walking. I'm numb and cold and hard. Pinch me and I won't make a peep; I won't feel it. I look at the world through hollow cavities, colors and light and movement shocking to my slow-motion thoughts, and I struggle to comprehend. I feel rail thin and brittle, but bloated at once, like a cheek after a dentist's injection, feeling swollen and looking ordinary. I poke myself to make sure I'm ordinary, but feel nothing. My stomach, I can feel my stomach, roiling and curdling, protesting its contents. Belches taste like soap and syrup, making the curdling worse, feeling at any moment I could lose those contents, knowing that it wouldn't make it better if I did. My head is full of air. I'm a bubble, a dry bubble ready to pop, releasing nothing but dust. Questions float by me like dandelion seeds in the wind, and I'm mesmerized by their grace but lost by their meaning. I'm surprised I can form semi-complete thoughts, but the surprise is dulled, like a rubber mallet on splintering wood.

Scrubbing shampoo onto my scalp this morning, I felt sleepy but fine for a Monday. When I opened my eyes, the shampoo bottle had escaped my sight, unless I turned my head sideways to see it. My husband brought me my pill, my little sweet release from the pain, that find the coldest floor in the darkest room, curl up and try not to sob because it makes it worse pain, and I swallowed knowing the day was lost anyway. That sweet release pushes me into a world of fog and dullness, stupidity and slowness, brittle and cold, like freezing rain on what should have been a bright and sunny day. I welcome it and hate it.