The wooden desk holds me steady. A kind of grounding. My orange plastic mouth hangs open.
A new pill bottle was placed beside me a few days ago, its label crisp and tight across its smooth skin. It hasn’t been touched yet. I remember when you used to reach for me and press my insides to your lips, cradle them against your tongue. My lid would pop open with a small twist.
I haven’t heard that sound in days.
This morning you pulled open the bone-white blinds and the sunrise spilled in, swollen and warm. Patches of light stipple your face and forearms like saffron scales. You turn toward the desk and I see you clearly now. Your shoulders sag. The skin around your waterline is purple, as if the night is still leaking from your eyes. Wisps of hair cling to your scalp like sap sliding down bark. Your lips purse as you sit. The computer wakes. Your eyes close.
Somewhere above me water gathers, learning the shape of falling. Soon it begins tapping against the roof, soft, patient dripping. You chew your fingernails. Your hands look sharp now, jagged.
Icicle fingers stab and scrape against the keyboard. You leave for a while that day. When you return your face is paler, and red crescents bloom in the crevices of your nails.
You sit again. You write for a long time. Sometimes your hands freeze above the keyboard, suspended as if caught in ice. Then suddenly they move again, quick, urgent, striking the keys like rain. The light moves slowly across the desk. Then you stop. Your hands hover over me. For a moment I think you remember. Your fingers drift across my plastic skin, warm and careful, tracing the grooves where my label once clung. I almost expect the familiar twist. The pop of my lid. The quiet release of what I hold.
Instead, you lift me. You carry me across the room. The trash can waits in the corner, dark and patient. You drop me inside. The fall is short. I land against a crumpled sheet of paper. Its wrinkles press flat against my side, and through the folds I can read the ink bleeding across it.
A poem. Or the beginning of one.
I am.
I am.
I am.
I am staring into Heaven.
But Heaven is on its knees—humid and hungry—
crawling through honeybees,
their bright bodies burning and breaking beneath holy skies.
Nirvana blooms with welts,
oozing pus.
I tell God I’m sorry.
My lips must sleep.
The ether is atrophied.
God is permanence.
Because when I press my feelings into permanence,
There is something permanent about me.
Bella Melardi is a poet and author. She writes about the political and personal. She attends OCADU.
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