compartments

i compartmentalize. i look at the corners,

the bookshelves, the fraying wallpaper,

and i wish there were meaning in them,

as if i could trace back my own misery to the peeled-off paint.

i compartmentalize: i am good at what i do.

i think about my life and i calculate, i put things in boxes,

packed to the gills with things not to think about;

i fiddle with masking tape;

it doesn't matter.

wherever i am: in san francisco, in patagonia,

half asleep on a train in kazahkstan,

i stare into space and the corners are the same and i flinch,

for a second i don't remember which way is east.

even the silence is the same,

the white noise that isn't quite noise.

i am surrounded by nonexistence; i curl into myself,

i remember nothing but the need to flee,

until i find the absence, the brittle-black shape that waits for me, here, everywhere.

my chin rests on my fist, eyes unfocused, blank,

staring at things that mean nothing to me.'

i don't go into the ocean because i don't know if i'd come out.

i have walked through the shallows, through the knee-deep ripples,

and kept walking, grey-green water at my hips, at my shoulders,

splashing into myopic eyes;

nothing has outlines, has edges, has definition;

even my fingertips a smear of shadow;

one day, i won't walk out.

i compartmentalize: there is a box of the ocean,

sometimes it is music and math, how the waves insinuate themselves against the shore,

and i kneel in the bathwater, head tilted, saltwater blurred against my hands.

i look at the corners, i look at the ocean, and i try to do the math,

i try to find what's missing, what's wrong,

what shapes should slot into place; what i should feel in their absence.

i sit here, i stare at the same corners, i can see the pieces of me i've peeled away,

and think of when the ocean meant something to me;

the corners have memories, pock-marked with the people i should have been.

but i compartmentalize. i smile; i laugh a little bit.

i tape up shapes, i bend the corners,

i stare into space.

and maybe someday there is space for me, somewhere,

with water that loves me, with corners that make sense,

uncovering boxes that feel like friends.

instead, i break my fingers where the walls meet,

i splay my crooked hands against the paint,

as if there are spaces that look like me,

and i think about the ocean, always,

shapeless like me,

like someday, maybe, i will find the right absence,

i will disappear into geometry, effortless and smooth,

or i will melt, i will dissolve myself,

dissolve the compartments, watching the water eat away at my broken bones,

sand scouring layers off my skin,

until i fit the brittle-black shape that waits for me,

until i don't care which way is east.

i stare at the ocean, i stare at the corners; maybe i loved them once --

maybe they loved me once.

but the corners are indifferent, the ocean rolls her eyes,

and i am embarrassed, looking down to my feet.

i have not found the right absence, i have not found the right boxes;

i barely know my own silhouette,

only the blurred edges, the crooked hands,

the shapelessness begging for a name.

i pick at my fingernails and i pick at my skin,

idly flexing my broken foot;

the waves lick my shins, my hips,

i watch indifferently as they count out my ribs;

i feel like i should feel something.

but the boxes are disintegrating, the corners crumbling,

eaten by their emptiness,

and i don't know them anymore.

i flex my broken fingers, i flex my broken foot,

i listen to the static sizzling in my head.

maybe someday i will find my own shape;

maybe i will understand what the ocean wants to tell me.

but maybe, i will always be the wrong absence,

the spaces something else should have taken;

i stare at my feet, shapeless, sheepish and apologetic,

waiting for the saltwater to melt me away.