A Little Note from the Empire: The Many in Me

Hello again.

Sometimes it pisses me off to meet you here. God, it’s the same old thing over and over again. When will you move the damn furniture, get rid of it even, instead of complaining so much about how it’s in your way all the time?

Maybe you like having things to complain about.

“It’s just a house,” they say. Even laugh at times. The outright cackles I have had thrown in my face about something they’ve deemed so fucking trivial that feels like a goddamn mountain sitting on top of me.

Why does it feel like a mountain sitting on top of me? It’s my Everest.

And yet they laugh. Buried alive in my own hell sometimes. I can’t seem to fit all my thoughts between these walls. I’m bursting at the seams I’ve been stitched into.

While you laugh... and I wail.

Though I drown in a sea of stuff and old memories, no one throws me a life raft.

I’ve been such a castaway I’ve forgotten even myself.

You know what it’s like to float in a sea of salt for days and days? You puff up like a pillow, your muscles become useless, and you’re just a blown-up pool float at the mercy of the sea.

How do you expect me to save myself when my arms are pillows soaked with sea?

When you’ve figured it out, I’d like to know.

In the meantime, I feel your snarls over my shoulder. Like whips. The thrashing too harsh to catch a breath. Can’t catch a lull long enough to look and see what’s truly happening. Find the little tornado causing all this mess.

She’s buried under the chaos, and I sense she’s terrified to stop long enough to see the world she’s living in.

Don’t make me fucking look.

She’d rather paralyze herself, immobilize herself, than allow the depth of her reality to sink in.

Death feels sweeter than this.

I’m so, so sorry.

The horrors are hidden beyond the pink-carpeted bedroom with the floral bedspread. Nothing goes well with dread.

The needles in my veins don’t match the curtains.

So many things I can’t put words to. Everything needs a fucking label these days. I need fucking labels!

What is this? Where does this go?

If I organize it on this shelf and it’s where I can see it, it won’t be able to go anywhere. I can keep track of it.

I can control... it...

I can’t control a mountain.

I can’t make Everest move.

But no one hears my screams beneath it.

And the same old story goes.

Over and over again.

And I get sick of meeting you here to hear you complain about the fucking furniture in your way.

I can’t move the furniture.

I’m paralyzed.