There are four daisies crumbling in the corner. There is a dirty mirror against the wall. You stretch out in front of it, naked and alone. Loneliness often gives us the freedom we wanted all along. The freedom to pose and take in our legs and ribs, our lines and our shadows. You have no desire to take a picture.

A painting of a girl in a bikini stands and stares upwards. She is painted onto a rough wood plank. You touch it wanting splinters. You do not receive splinters. There is no one to hurt you here in your room but yourself. The girl in the bikini still stares upwards, maybe at stars. Her hair and swimsuit are orange, like your mother. Like your mother, you have no desire to take a picture.

You are four legged on the carpet. You arch your back and then curve it downwards. Cat and cow. Focusing on your breathing, you feel your air rise in and out of you. You are a beach ball deflating and inflating. Your throat is a pulley, a rope behind your tongue. Diaphragms and rib cages are only noticed by the mindful. The mindful have no desire to take a picture. They are the ones who remember instead.

The carpet you kneel on is a kind of basil color, you wanted to feel like you were standing on grass. You dig your fingernails deep in it, with the rubber bands and the paper clips and staples. You are an animal made for ripping. You are devolving on your carpet.

Animalia over, you climb into your bird’s nest of sheets, blankets, and quilts. Mother always said you were like a bird. Cautious. Flighty.

The lamp next to you used to be a kitchen lamp. It was the kind to light up mugs of tea and books. It hurt your eyes early in the morning. This lamp is a shapeshifter, though. Now it acts as a bedside lamp. It is on late into the night for poems and bedroom dances. You turn it off now though, because you are ready to make eye contact with the moon. The moon has kept you awake for far longer than the shapeshifting lamp. It makes sense; the moon has been around for longer.

The moon herself ambles by your window, her hair a curtain of charcoal clouds. She winks and prances around you, a naked soul for only your eyes and hers. How the eyes of the moon allow us to become brave. How the night sets us free.

The bedroom is hot; sweat collects on the underside of your thighs. You are cross legged on your bed now, observing the cup in your mattress formed by years of sleep. Energy vibrates out of it, as if all of the thoughts and dreams and wants could come spilling out at any moment. Your bed is an imprint, a shell, a snakeskin that you slide out of each morning.

The wall next to the bed has a small crack in the sheetrock. It is a wrinkle in the sterile white, a crevice, a loophole. It is a reminder that things can always be changed by rain. The rain disfigures the moonbeams shining through the window. The rain can break. The rain can wash away. The rain can make new. For now, the rain has created a crevice in your wall, ever widening. It opens like a flower before your eyes. The petals fall onto your bed. It is alive and expanding, as living things tend to do.

You look through the space, the hole in your room and untangle yourself from the blankets. You stick your feet through the opening, feeling nothing. Your mattress is one of those organic ones, made out of something that smells like grass. Because it is all-natural, it is also uncomfortably firm. As you slide your hips past, you feel your bed again on the other side. You rest there for a moment, staring at the ceiling in the moonlight. When you are fully through the crack, you take in your room. The cup is there, the girl, the moon, the lamp, the mirror, the loneliness, the carpet. Someone warm is in your sheets too, someone breathing the way a person breathes when they are asleep. You see a familiar head of hair on the pillow, some familiar hands. You curl up around yourself in a bizarre self-embrace and find your hands. Some strange form of self care, holding your own hands in the dark.

See Lyda's page here.