Opus

And August?

August is when I can't feel
my skin, the late summer heat
clamps at my face, my forehead and
the back of my eyes.

My eyes, which long for shade, for the
embrace of a dark room, for sleep,
for the mountains, and for life to end
once and for all.

The day sticks on to my armpits
and crevices on my skin long after it is over.
Impure. Disconsolate. The bed seems like an ocean,
I can't sleep without a blanket, without weight
to pin me down.

(I can't sleep anyway, but I try)

My skin melts, my voice cracks,
my speech splinters, becomes incoherent,
I fail to sustain conversations.
I see myself reflected in in the world, subjectively :
Not a being. I draw the shreds back together
into a fragmented identity. Brittle. Very unsound.
Is it sad not to see myself reflected in the eyes
that I look into?

Or to look into the mirror and see
what I see, an inconsequential being, that reflects
nothing, relates nothing, means nothing.
To have an inside and an outside, to be so confined
in the dichotomy that I keep fading on both ends.

August is only a harsh metaphor.