dconfessional

I want to let all of them chew at my skin - all of the sane and all of the insane. I want all of the pain to fill the ripe holes - to sit there, to settle until it feels plain and protects me. I've asked all of the ceilings and all of the walls to crumble and crush me and make me part of the floors. Can all of the sun and all of the dirt pull and reverse me until I am part of the stars and part of the earth?

After a week of these daily intolerable attacks I went to our university clinic, infamous for its doctors who type students' symptoms into a search engine online to diagnose them. I sat, waiting for them to announce my name, my knee bouncing and my nervous eyes glancing, in the midst of panic. When they called me back to find out my weight and blood pressure, I alarmed them with news that my heart was racing. They stuck me in a room for a half hour. I waited and finally a nurse came in hauling a large machine that looked like a plastic typewriter. She said the doctor wanted to check the health of my heart with an EKG. I was unprepared as she

When my eyes are forced open at 3:45 in the morning by a rapid pulse and hot flashes, I am struck by terror. I am sweating onto the mattress and quickly becoming consumed by my own oppressive thoughts. I am going crazy. I am sick. I am alone. I am going to die. I am having a panic attack. I cannot wake Corey because once I start vocalizing my thoughts they will overwhelm him too, and I will frighten him with my madness. I would curl my knees and my elbows into my chest. My hair would be tangled and bunched into fists of white knuckles. "I don't know what's happening. Please help me. I want this to stop." His looks of concern would not soothe

I made up this rule in the ninth or tenth grade to never say good-bye, but rather to say, "See you later," or sometimes a wave of my hand would suffice. I did not want the responsibility of permanence. At least, not until I could accept that the people I love would some day wither, and that maybe, just maybe, I'd get the chance to catch their last breaths. I think he had been dying since I could give meaning to death. First, it was just coughing and drunk driving with my sister and I in the front of his truck. Too young to know that the constant thunder of rumble strips meant inebriation. Then his nine to five job was having a seat on the po

Our one-bedroom apartment is filled with bodybuilding paraphernalia: a stack of Muscular Development magazine in the bathroom, Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography, weights, protein powder – anything a bodybuilder-in-training would ever need, Corey owns. He eats 16 eggs every day, along with two cups of oatmeal, three peanut butter sandwiches, one pound of chicken, three cups of pasta, and eight ounces of tuna. He allows himself one cheat meal a week, typically craving Burger King and ice cream. Recently, I told Corey that his thighs looked bigger than the size of my torso. His attitude was similar to anyone trying endlessly to perfect

I want to lay down on the roses and bones the snow has collected and kept below freezing as the mist from our lips sighs into another underwater night. Even the lake is emaciated, thirsty for flames of daylight. When will the sun unleash my bare feet and let my tongue taste the heat?

I need your eyelashes and your hairline and your fingernails to be okay with these lips. I was never taught to become cement, trampled and stiff. The solstice is haunting my skin and even the tissue in my lungs. The evening keeps bringing me cancer. So I'll put my lips on your face and fill my eyelids with someone instead of no one.

The scent of the morning sunlight on the carpet wakes him and he knows he made mistakes last night. He is losing so many things - even his mouth is on the floor, his tongue is in his lungs. Bitter whisky perfume in his breath and the mess on his bed didn't sleep as easy. Still in her stilettos, the look of fulfilling sadness lay in the corners of her mouth. Each of her inhales whistle and all of his exhales whimper.

Even though the sun can lick the space between my toes, I'm still half empty.

The sun on my skin feels like the blanket you've been all winter.