it seems these days I just want the dark, the dark and the silence, to curl inward until I am small and round and impenetrable, until my back doesn’t hurt anymore, my arms don’t hurt, my head doesn’t hurt, my heart doesn’t hurt, so many things hurt and nothing seems to touch any of them, not Imitrex or Advil or wrist braces like gauntlets on my arms, only the dark and the silence soothe, only in sleep am I someone who moves without pain, who flies over canyons or swims through oceans, through magma, who bends fire and water and earth, and for every dimension and law of physics I control in my dreams there is another thing uncontrollable when I wake, I doubt that’s irony but it’s cruel anyway