Are you tossing and flailing inside?

Wailing at the silence, grappling with your own limbs?

Remember that clear blue afternoon?

Talk to me:

Why do the happiest recollections

Wreathe you in that doleful, deserted look?

As though you’d lost something?

You were always afraid of heights

Even while dancing on the edge of the precipice

You were always afraid of the fall

I know it when you twist and crumple

All caught up in hurt and dolour

The rhythm of your heaving lungs

The convulsions of your glistening countenance

It’s all too familiar

But with a blind eye and the chamber music on

I could almost be convinced that you are laughing

I’m laughing, anyway

— You look like a fish drowning in water

I know it’s only me you’re trying to tear apart

Your skin, too tired to stretch and fold on your command

A suffocating film over a body breathing yet

I know I’ve been sleeping

Deaf to the clock’s chiming

To their praise and their berating

But I hear you screaming

A haunting, invigorating sound

So I am groping for direction

Traipsing through the brume

I will never lose the scent

Until I find my pride again