how does it feel to drown?

i spent thirty-some-odd hours without eating once.

(don’t do that. i was fourteen and trying not to be afraid but failing miserably.)

no one had ever told me that i could be cold and hot at the same time.

(or maybe they had, but when you’re fourteen you don’t listen.)

nor that i could see black and white. nor that i could be clammy yet dry-mouthed.

(honestly? when you’re fourteen, nuances like that don’t exist.)

i lifted that veil for myself in treble choir

during recitation-one

on the fourth floor

by trying to take a sip of water

because the base of my skull was aflame.

i thought i was the bravest girl i knew,

forging forward on frontiers thus unknown,

but in all my feverish and foolish explorations,

i merely found myself flat on the groaning linoleum

sticky and scuffed, stinking of sick, sprinkled with sand

tardy, terrible, and turgid, too terrified of the teacher (he

didn’t like any of us. also his last name was the name of

a brand of bagged pretzels.) to ask permission to help

myself. to put out whatever it was that was on

fire within me. maybe it wasn’t fire. i saw

less and less the longer it burned.

and on the third day i woke

at relative thermal equilibrium,

tender, spotted like an overripe banana.

i guess i fell.