these days,

I am summoning every version of escapism I can muster; a testimony to my inadequacy. some days the sentences come in the wrong order. some days I can smell the smoke and still won’t get up out of my chair. there is a living thing in the pit of me, I have only just learned her name. and when she claws at me from underneath, when she pulls herself up through my ribcage to fill my throat and stake her claim, Shame silences me. she has me building the guillotine. I tried to speak past her, once. tried to tell the man in the park about the nails I have swallowed, he told me that no one had noticed. I dug the moat. shut the doors. tripled the deadbolts of a home no one would have broken into anyway.