I begrudge no one their happiness;

and yet I do at times recoil with the sense that all my dark thoughts will slick out across them like oil on the waters of my childhood

at times I feel like a machine that turns time into unnecessary sorrow

a machine that turns affection into sickness because all the volume knobs are missing and the cables cut in and out 

at most times, I think, I do not feel like a human being.

I am trying not to faint, or to weep, or sink my arms around the many bodies I have no claim to

but I think I could handle loneliness if only this vertigo would leave me.

Tie me to this bed so I cease my drifting. Stake me to the ground with your polished tools, for I am a floating cloud of blood.