On Standby

On Standby

My calf seizes in the dark

and by morning, I limp and drag myself out like an apology.

She says I’m dehydrated—

but it feels more like my jaw has been chewing

on the night itself. I’m tense.

Anxiety makes a home in the shoulders.

I pour coffee into paper cups

while cars orbit the lot like lazy satellites.

I am not in the building.

Not in my skin.

Somewhere between

the hum of compressors and my own impossible silence.

Rival Schools blares through one ear

and I hear it:

that quiet violence I carry in the tendons—

a kind of waiting,

not quite a bomb,

but close.

poke.

poke.

trigger warning.

and I flinch before anything happens.

Most days evaporate before I can name them.

The hours are cluttered with yeses

I didn’t mean to give.

My therapist tells me

that’s the same as surrender.

I feel like a blade of grass,

not waving,

but brittle—

lifted by whatever wind wants me.

The things I cannot control

have gathered in my chest like fire ants.

They swarm.

Today is wearing yesterday’s coat.

And tomorrow will try it on again.

God willing, something is shifting.

I say I’m becoming.

I say I am becoming.

But the mirror is slow to catch up.

The universe expands past meaning—

a balloon with no ceiling—

and still I can’t seem

to fathom the reach of my own hands.