It’s the early morning phone calls from persons on toxicities in toxic cities,
desperate for your ears.
It is either 9:30 a.m. or it is either 3:39 a.m.
Either way you are asleep, you are resting, your vicious thoughts at bay
Either way you awake for those you love when the call comes through
The exhaustion and fatigue are mind numbing and body aching
But I clear my head,
I listen and lie fully yours as I sit up in bed,
I am a soldier at attention
listening and creating a compartment specifically for your woes,
searching in files for your solutions, for your solaces.
I offer them, honestly and delicately, neatly and organized.

But you notice me only as a person placed directly below you,
tucked in a gray lifeless cubicle used solely for your discretion
and at your convenience.
Have you ever stopped to think that maybe
my fingers,
my hands,
my limbs,
are sore?

Yes,
they are porous and weak,
they are wrecks,
they are unaccounted for,
they are malnutritioned;
Ill and diseased.

I am only this one flawed entity,
as desperate and disoriented as yourself.
My demons they are not as
mutilating
or as apparent
as yours,
but they exist.

They exist when I lay my head down early in the evening,
when my tired body can no longer fight against my consistent rush hour mental statements.
My body mails itself constant overdue bills,
I am in debt.
“You owe us”
it says to me.

But the kinetic energy is infinite,
never ceasing its constant departures,
its arrivals,
its schedules.

Decadence sets in but I do not realize it,
chocolate covered rotting strawberries of repressed anxieties.
My boiling temperaments are a tumor
growing inside of me
and gnawing at my poor bones.

Those bones that I use as I please without rest,
and allow others to use as they see fit.

Those bones that laid on his bed,
on his ink covered body.

He borrowed those bones from you,
arranged them in positions he felt suitable,
and discarded them days later,
“you are not getting in”
he said to me only days after entrance to him had been granted,
without much thought to the whole process.

Did you ever think to yourself how great of a pity it is?
Your disregard for that home you call body.
It is used by others
seeking relief,
seeking answers,
seeking pleasure.
You lend it out with no remorse.

Those bones that never rest and are in constant motion

The beautiful composition of pearl structures
just underneath the thickness of skin,
but have you ever graced them or relished them,
hummed to them a lullaby,
or painted them a lovely portrait?
Thank you cards haphazardly thrown away,
blank.

Those bones that are rarely noticed,
they lie in the background of everyday life,
they are the buzzing refrigerator
they are the air conditioning units
just underneath your second story window.
They are beautiful.
They are necessary.
They are exhausted.

Yet I cannot stay in one place,
and I cannot sleep.

Insomnia is a silent disease,
it plagues the weary, the lost, the hungry.
It jumbles thoughts, and wreaks havoc on each brain cell.

The stars above this pieced jigsaw of night and morning sky are far and few in between.
I cannot tell if they are beautiful, I have forgotten.
Little pieces of light, they are supposed to be aesthetically pleasing to my retinas, I hear.
The dark opaque background that frames the white specks is vast and expansive,
full of spectacular views, is it not just as beautiful?
The condensation on the glass panes is a tangible vision of the heavy humidity
The silent twitch in my eye is a tangible vision of my sinister cerebellum
But can you see it? Or is it something I have created entirely on my own?
My sickness is not chemically induced attempted self destruction like yours,
but sometimes I am not so certain.

“What would you have done?” you ask
and I think to myself
“I do not know, “

Relaying sparks in my brain come alive and I begin to question:
Would I have taken the two yellow enigmas?
Or would I have taken the one?
Would I have taken any at all,
after already being under the influence of another?
But even I would know better,

Bodies are precious.