depersonalization disorder

when I first wake up I don’t have all the things you say I have.

the diseases, the addictions, the loves,

the losses.

I forget that anything is wrong with me.

some mornings I feel normal, like the numb robot I might be and probably am.

the light changes rapidly

and I lose focus.  I see familial pieces of DNA in faces of strangers and I get confused.

I don’t know Adam, but he knows me.

I float in an unreality of re-churned genetic pieces, smiles and eyebrows and wristwatches, missing something that is only mine.

you’re talking to me, I think.

but I can’t be sure.

I am somewhere far away, because the sound of your voice hurts. I know what you will say, but I don’t know what I will say. I must leave you pushing words towards a shell.

I nod and smile, on a plane to the nucleus of another galaxy. I will not be back until a flashing anchor is dropped and jerks me into putting a seatbelt on.

I miss you but you’re right here.

I miss when we were babies and you were real, before I went away and you changed your name.

I miss cocaine and corn liquor and catfish (which I have never eaten.)

the woman pretending to be the flight attendant is a robot with terrifying eyes. her limbs move independently of the moth on the wall observing me. (how can there be a moth in an airplane? if you were here you’d tell me that it’s just a black triangle separating the sane from loony tunes, the seers from the haters.

but you’re not here.)

the flight attendant left behind her demonstration seatbelt, so maybe she’s not a robot after all, but then again everything is in need of reprogramming.

my body rhythms to bluegrass even though a little girl stares. (my left foot and left hand aren’t even controlled by you, they always do whatever I pretend to not want, and I secretly love that I am

anywhere and anyone

in spite of you)

when your heart breaks I feel it more than you, a slow ripping of slippery flesh from bone.

I need to shrink more than anything, but it’s not gonna happen today.

aren’t we all just branches?

bark chunks on trunks

brainwashed by the sun

I am you, boring

and old

and you are a bad-acting robot who just stopped by to pick up the left-behind seatbelt (bug to be fixed with the next update)

I know if I just wait this craving will pass, but why put off ‘til heaven what I can do right now?

I should regret and apologize in advance for fucking a husband (he will claim it was lucid dreaming, but the wet spot reminds me that you are concrete and fire and hopeless black and white.)

water is dripping from the ceiling of the jet, and the droids are scrambling. I just need to shut everyone up. shut everyone off with the flip of a switch and start over on an island with Adam and his stubbornly stupid dreadlocks.

this morning upon waking I forgot that nothing is real. the flight attendant most likely never knew that, so she has nothing to remember.

I can’t decide whether that is oatmeal, or

the most beautiful thing imaginable.