grief will not be the last thing i remember

Deeper, deeper into this sweet quiet. Sweeter and sweet, and the darker the night gets, the less I feel. There, at four am, thinking about nothing. I am home, and I am safe. There is nobody I need to talk to, nobody will ever need anything of me again. My eyes stay open, my body listens to only itself. While this space is quiet, peace seeps through in different ways. I do not seek peace, not yet. There is nothing to be felt.

I keep all ideas and knowings out. It is not a combat. I am just listening to other music. This song sounds so good. This is my jam. This is my song. Forever and ever I will keep listening to this song, as I live through this dream.
Home and somewhere else entirely. A physical self sticks to these bedsheets like a toy stuck to a window. This body is filled with liquids and fruits not its own. It peels, shedding empty husks, revealing something quieter beneath. A place of solemn quiet. The window looks to the hollow and cold world. In one moment, I am growing, and yet the window is so dirty. I can hardly see the garden. Would that be best, honestly? Would that really be the best thing for me to see right now? What will living through this really mean? What does it mean to really live? The body stays awake.
When was the last time I slept?
The days are the same. They should not be the same.
The days are only outlined by self-destructive impulses. There were late nights on dark piers.
How does the ocean look back at me? What does this reflection see? In the darkness of the water, I couldn’t see anything. Why is the world so still at night? A group of boys walked around me. They asked if I was looking at the fish. I was so scared they would throw me over. It would have been so nice, to feel how cold the water was, just to feel nothing again. I was so scared they would throw me over. The water would have been so cold. Oh, the things I would do for a good night’s sleep. The tomatoes would stare out the window, while the warmth fled from my body, handed through the gates of this invisible body to another. 
There is something about this place which I will never forget. Somebody died last week. I don’t think we were ever super close. In admission, I don’t think any of this family are. We’re all tethered by biology, nothing more. Sharing space inhabited entirely by body and subject to linear rule. Our connection is in no way drawn out, by trees or history, only by fractal nodes. Fractal selves, appealing to anonymous kinship. How do you tell these people apart? How are we connected without being the same person? How will they ever care? I don’t think these people know who I am?
And then the grief loses — is this my place to lose somebody? The body is broken and opening, fissures splitting across the skin, tearing open while the fibers of flesh stretch. The radiator is on. This room is so warm. The window is kept open, because the stale air makes it so hard to breathe. The body is not at peace. This is a disgusting, miserable, vile, putrid, rancid, ruthless, careless, nothingful body.
The body will repeat, this night will repeat, leaving itself a tired wreck at four am. Go to sleep, go to sleep.

i am so tired.
somebody died last week.
i think it was a few weeks ago now.
so much happened.
but i just stayed here.

it was alzhimers.
so i just stayed here.
dementia, to be more specific.
my dad was told by
she’d had it the life of knowning her.
my brother was told by
i kept count of the times i told her my name when i was five.
my mother was told by the doctors.
or somebody
who i hadn’t seen in
four or five
or six or seven
years,
i don’t know, i can’t remember.
or somebody who’d know better.
she would never reach out like that.
i think it’s strange
that nobody knows
when she died
it was like
they all forgot
i don’t know
if i should be
missing somebody
who never knew me.

When I was still little I went to their little cottage in Belfast to stay for a weekend. The cottage always smelled of oil and worried me back then. I stayed in the spare room that was quiet and the bed was stiff but we played a game I had brought. There were little bees in a beehive and leaves. You either had to get the bees or keep the bees away, but I can’t remember. There was another time when they were looking after me and I didn’t want to go home. Avatar was on TV. I really didn’t want to go home but it was getting darker and darker outside and I was scared of driving at night. I saw into some quiet shadow, and was home. I can’t remember if I was younger or older. Her husband, Des, was buried at the same church he took me to on Sunday mornings. There were triangle shapes, black shapes filling the space where I looked and wandered and didn’t think that I needed to have a body. I look back now, incorporeal and wish that I was less of this self. I didn’t go to the funeral, because I will not be allowed.
I’m so tired. I’m so tired.
How would I talk to you? How would I open connection to you? Did you ever really know what I am?
Do you remember the time you called me a girl because my hair was long? My arms split and reach, but what did you know? Were you looking into someone else's eyes? You’ll not remember, but I wonder if you saw something true in me. If that was true, maybe all of this would hurt a little less.

i don’t know.
i don’t know.
i don’t know.

(I’ve been swamped with assignments recently. Writing 1000 words is more difficult now than it was earlier, unsurprisingly. Still, I hope they find a way to mean something.)