A prayer to my enemy offered softly-
Supple mouth moving, shifting, singing
Old songs.
I want to be at peace, my center,
- I want to be at rest.
I am losing hope, my compass. I am losing my way.
North was once and now isn't, a concept only,
A concept lost on me in the howling nights

I am losing myself, being pulled tighter and
Tighter inward, spiraling, gyrating, maddening

Crowded cowering self lost amongst the deluge
Of pure, hot terror I force myself to drink
Drink deeply.
Imbibe.
Burn yourself because somehow you can't
Help it, you were born this way,
With this crossed wire, this loose
Screw.

The clock was winding down but I didn't hear
The space between the ticking

I was too absorbed in the space between breaths
The space between to do and done,
Momentary existence,
My world the size of a tossed coin
Inward gravity obscuring the soft
Fall morning, no joy in the crisp
Linen air, just wrenching anticipation
Of the drink,
the drink,
the drink

Always the drink.

You shocked me from my shell and I looked down
At an amorphous, gasping, bleeding pink fleshy thing
I could not recognize, internals made external
Made deeply wrong.
Repetitive rubbing in the same places
Reopened old wounds
Old wounds festered
No strength left, I thought-
Nothing left but to tremble
Prostrate before the might of disease
I drank, and I cried.

You comforted me because I needed it
I needed to be rescued, propped up,
I was stranded inside myself and
Saw no way out but to crawl deeper

Deeper inside my own chest and
Suffocate softly there
No sound but the panicked breathing
And the next-day sobbing

But when I found myself
Rebreathing my own exhalation,
Not as a metaphor but as a way

To force my heart rate down,

Extorting a homeostatic control-
I knew.

I knew I was swimming somewhere dark
And deep
And that my own limbs

Were grown weak

I have to rejoin my life next week

I took a vacation from it
A sick holiday to the coast
By the sea, to breathe in
The sea-air, the salt,
The serotonin-
Days in a daze of doctors and
Sometimes shaking,

Sometimes crying,
Sometimes ignoring it all
As I fingered the fabric of a pretty
Blouse- a forget-me flower-

I am frightened I will not fit back into it.

I am frightened that I cannot keep this

Meltdown- this implosion- Contained.
Letters were written and sent.

Emails. Explanations. 
I hate that they know, it's
That old voice back again,
Deep-water voice,
You're weak

But then there's a new voice, too,
A desperate one that yells
Fuck it all, let's tell everyone.
Let me show them all my bleeding
Entrails, the holes in my brain, my heart,
Fuck them if they recoil,
This is me, this is valid,
This is real, happening,
I can't, won't, don't want to hide it
I want to be authentic.

I want to be authentic.
I want to be free.
I want to cut myself free from myself and breathe
Just breathe

That's all I'm praying for, enemy mine-
A ceasefire, cohabitation,
Though we're always one
Trying to kill the other

Let us share this body quietly, for once,
Even if it be a body possessed.