meat

I guess this is the first time in a month or so that I’ve felt the meat grinder again. Adderall induced, there is a tightness in my chest that is rendering me a hop skip and a jump away from psychosis. I talked to someone today who told me that nowadays, when he gets in bed he begins to feel a poisonous lucidity—one that has beckoned him to start praying until he falls asleep, an activity which he hasn’t indulged in since childhood. I wish I had a framework for prayer, but my replacement behavior is my one capability in this moment—staring at the ceiling for so long that I cleave it with my gaze. I could only hope to be there when the ceiling collapses over me and relish the fact that I watched its every move until it met its demise. If I can’t do it with people then the ceiling is a comfortable substitute, a placebo in the compulsion to bear witness to the lives of everyone I love. I wish I could be there to observe the moment that the meat grinder subsides, where I hop the gap back onto the mainland and it is noticeable and real. It seems I can’t stare at the ceiling forever nor be present to see myself minding the gap.