better

I am settling into my skin again. I feel less the need by the hour, by the day, to reach out and collect the pieces I keep leaving all over the hardwood floor. I am better. Better is a progressive word not a state, I am bettering, I am getting better. However you phrase it, I am other than I was before. I find less languages getting caught in my throat, resting on the bones that hold my head high. I know words again for things I’d forgotten words for. I can think in straight lines without ending up whiplashing myself against memories. It doesn’t take me down anymore. 

I am getting around lately on these ideas of something other, of how much there is for me to have in this world. I get tickled in the shower sometimes because I am inside of this body and it’s taking me places. I am more aware of my space, of my skin, of the way bones press against each other, how my tooth aches. The filler, the filter, the filament has been taken out and everything is rattling around inside of me, but I’m learning how to listen for good sounds and how to make patterns in the noise – becoming it’s own music. 

I think about drinking bourbon on that white couch and talking about scars and how her bare feet pressed into these same wooden floors, how these were her doorways. Sometimes people just need another beating heart in the room to remember they themselves must take constant breaths. We tether life boats because this sea never ends and we agree on a lot of things, like how to always drink your coffee black. Connection is connection and nothing has ever made sense so why ask that of life right now?

In the mornings I am alone and in the evenings I am alone and in the hot afternoon while sweat slips down my sternum I am alone. I am getting better at this, at this being alone, and I’ve even begun to like it. Because in the dark of the night there are wonderfully scary places of me I had yet to wander into. I am surprised by every turn, just like that dream I had in the beginning of this– the one about the hallways and the basement and I knew I was dreaming only because you were there.