Isn’t the heart soft?
or, it’s supposed to be
oh, God, isn’t it supposed to be?
Mine’s a rock, a weight
not just in my chest but
in all the other non-soft bits of me, too—
Do they have hands? claws, fists
Mine does, I think, and if not
then what’s this feeling? 
Choking from the inside out then
choking from the outside in and
I know my blood is pumping
I can hear it feel it taste it
Why does it hurt so bad?
make me so afraid?
If my own heart fights my own ribcage. . .
is it a fight? or the desperation of a beached shark?
God, I don’t know.
The confusion doesn’t have hands but
crawls through me like spilled wine,
softens my thoughts, makes me 
slow and small and meek
just like everything else about me
Right?
What excuses have I ever needed to be afraid? 
I wish I could stay in bed all day
God, I wish I never had to get up again
why are the walls closing in on me and
I know I should want to make changes
do something anything to get out of this but. . .
Why? I can’t find any reasons, any reasons,
even when they surround me,
flies and maggots and sand on the corpse
making the corpse 
preparing for it to be a corpse
All the hands and eyes touching
and watching as the tide runs away
from me, away from me—
Who should know—
oh, to be so ungrateful.
oh, to never have known it as ungratefulness. 
To whom do I owe this gratitude? 
To whom should I pay my respects?
I hate how I feel all the time but
how else should I feel? 
Am I allowed to feel
better, different, bigger? 
I don’t want to—do I?
the terror runs right through me
in the empty hallways I still dream of
past every room of mistake and regret
All of it, made a home in me 
with all the hurt and shittiness and I hate it
my heart hurts and pounds and beats
aren’t I so lucky
so reliable, so alive
so reliable, so haunting
Too fast inside, too slow out
and the fear has a hold on me
familiar and it makes the happiness
look less like a future and more like a nightmare
Don’t aim too high and you won’t be disappointed.
Don’t aim at all and you won’t be anything.