I can’t decide how much of my nightmares I should leak into my waking life, how much of them I should try to tell, how much to suppress, how much of them I should cherish like the skin of my child, how much I should scrape away like the sharp unforgiving barnacles of the deep regretful sea.

I have a secret self without skin.

You have one too even if you won’t acknowledge it. It’s the self you protect wordlessly because to breathe on it would collapse its wild delicate musculature, would warp its margins beyond recognition, beyond reconciliation.

Your secret self is louder than anyone can hear.

The things I want to tell you are thick with D minor in a fugue state you can’t reach from any chair.

When it’s all over there’s just enough room for you to disintegrate prettily into the second skin you knitted when your own slipped off without your permission.

Beyond this, there is less than nothing.