550p 7 march 2024

feeling soft
and wounded
made smaller and out of shape, pushed
quieted,
pushed aside.

Tomorrow will be loud.
And tomorrow.

then more quiet, but mine, this time.

i don’t like that the shadow of the dog is in the scarcest corner of my view
barely even the hintiest hint of a shape
not the scratchy pointiness of its usual form, no.

an edgeless thing
sliding into/outof sight

I haven’t seen it for a long time
(it sniffs and slinks around the curves of things
seeking sustenance
)
I feel the whiplash of the day, days.
straining, strangling the happy hold I had on my present, my future
I saw a future.
A few days ago I would have told it,
“there is nothing here for you.”
(Of course there is, there always will be.
The wolf you feed, etm.)

I am trying to unravel the why, as always, as always
when I already know the answer.

There is no miracle, there is no magic bullet, there is no bulletproof. It is always there, lurking in the background like the black dog.

I can be grateful for the happy I have had,
I know there will be more.
I don’t, though.
I don’t.
I want to believe.
I have proof that I felt that way, I have proof of how good it was.
Even if I can’t feel it, I can watch it, over and over again.

My hope is that the resulting down is not equal to how good I have been feeling because I don’t know that I can survive that.
But forewarned is forearmed.

I need softness, I need quiet.
I don’t know how to get that.