Don't Look at the Dead Bodies Lying on the Side of the Road

I cry a lot in the shower, in the bathroom, really. I imagine because it’s the most private room in the house. No one interrupts you when you’re in the bathroom. Except small children. If you have small children, there are no sacred places. They need; they want; they fulfill.

I sit on the toilet and the tears start. It begins at the base of my skull, in that ancient place that has no intelligence beyond the basics. It moves into my eyes, my vision turning brown. My ears clog with dull air. I smell rotting vegetation, damp, muddy and heavy. My skin itches, microscopic bugs crawling on the underside of my dermis. Iron fills my mouth. I wouldn’t notice if I bit my tongue in half. I was fine an hour ago. That thought is my lifeline. I was fine an hour ago, I can be fine again. The roaring continues. The shaking in my bones rattles my teeth. It hurts to breath. Not physical breathing. The breathing of my soul. It hurts so bad that I just need to stop. Quit. I don’t even know what it is, but it aches like a bad tooth or an infected ear or an ice pick in the brain.

I move. I move into the shower and let the water mix with my sorrow. I sob. I might drown in the shower. I shove my fist into my mouth to keep quiet. I bite down, the pain of my teeth on my knuckles distracting me momentarily from the other pain. I disgust myself. I have no logical reason to be this way. I am defective. I am broken. I am worthless. That decided, I calm down long enough to go on, go through the motions. It doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. I don’t really exist.

I need to derail that big, black train that belches black and grey smoke, the monstrous diesel engine forcing the powerful machine down the track, past any possible switches to other directions. I picture that train: large, opaque, steel, dark, unstoppable. I chew off a fingernail and spit it into the path of the churning wheels. The friction abates just enough in that miniscule spot and the locomotive flies into the air and crashes in a fiery ball of noise and confusion followed by the cessation of sensation.

Nothing is an improvement.