san/

you keep talking about that trip
like you didn't experience the paranoia
I did
like you
weren't afraid of burning the house down
a second time -
I was

you keep talking about it being earth-provided
but there's nothing natural
about my head

dancing out and away from my body
a tiny me-ghoul reminding me
of my own
creeping mortality

every time I am high now
I remember I will die
and I imagine all the ways
it might happen

including you turning a knife on me

there's nothing natural about that

and when I am awake,
alive and
not in other states
I'm caught up in the most
unholy, unworldly of heads -
I'm not even here
I'm culling myself thin

thinner than when I vomited for two days straight
thinner than my bones feel on acid
thinner than the line that's driven itself
between I
and
you

thinner than my bank account
thinner than my ability to talk sense
thinner than my ferritin levels
after rice-bread-potatoes
for three months straight

thinner than the space between my eyebrows
as it slowly collapses in on itself