Maybe,

Maybe, I thought,

I’ll step around those words.

That came from some part of him.

(I can’t tell the heart from other parts of the body.)

Careful and heavy with purpose,

They hit me like someone putting their foot

In the center of my chest.

They walked all over me,

All night.

And when the sun came up,

The blank, white walls rose,

On a bare mattress,

I felt.

A little bruised and beaten,

A little buzzed,

A little space.

And less of the great, crushing, eternal you,

The you of wrinkled foreheads and frenetic energy.

The you of reason and a steering wheel.

Subtraction of a million memories,

I feel it, in this very second, falling away,

The rug pulled out from under me.