they ask what she remembers.
she tries and she can remember trees.

the dogwood tree,
she remembers driving back to that old house and
that tree being gone.

she remembers roofs. black tarred shingles.
she remembers how the leaves looked from above.
the overwhelming urge to jump to, slip off the edge.

she remembers wondering what would happen when her body hit the ground.
the insatiable length of space between gutter and grass,
that drop, she remembered the pull.
it led her up the stairs and over the ledge, out the window.

the crack of collarbone, snap of spine. she remembers
imagining herself light as air, floating down, parachute-like.

she remembers her baby brother crying,
her father's strong grip on her arm,
yanking her from the fall.

they ask her what she remembers.
all she says is,
it's never about death.

"we are unknown, we knowers, ourselves to ourselves." - nietzsche

winter mornings, the ambiguity of winter cheeks, a cold space i can't fill up. my head feels like a vast expanse of empty space, paralyzed by my past. by this cold. my fingers are numb, my thought processes slowed to match the frozen scenery outside. my fingers are too numb to button the buttons, zip the zippers. i tie a bathrobe swiftly and run outside to greet the snow. chainsmoke, two cigarettes, shivering. it's a good day if he's not the first thought on my mind. it's a bad day if i obsess over whether or not we're still friends. it feels like that hold is so loose and intangible, not the way i feel with other friends. glued and safe.

another cigarette, my body convulsing by now. my heart feels raw. my heart feels too much. the world is spinning, my thoughts are racing, my only placation via hand to mouth to hand to mouth. smoke in tendrils, cloud bursts. i feel too much or i feel too little. balancing between euphoria and deep, dark depression. it feels like there's so little in the interim. no relief. i bounce obsessively, a vain attempt at staying warm. when i find myself back inside, i have little to distract.

the precipice between warmth and cold, light and dark, euphoria and dysphoria...all these ineffable, intangible dotted lines. i feel old. i feel like i've been running through this cycle for decades, for hundreds of years. it makes me weary, it's exhausting being so emotional, feeling. i feel by force, these chemicals in my brain flipping me around. maybe it is only now, because i see no color, because my bones feel ancient. he's right when he says i've lost hope, but i don't know if he's correct when i say i'm irrevocably broken and he denies my ability to be so. i am in such a state that i cry for no reason, numb myself as much as possible, tuck my heart back in my chest and hold on for dear life.