i can see a lot of life in you.

you're criss-crossed today, up and down like some package you can't unwrap because the plastic won't yield to the tip of your knife. but you don't want to open it, so the wounds aren't deep enough, don't bleed enough, so you try again later on when you've changed your mind. you're not trying to die, you're trying to live and in order to live you've got to wake up, because you can't live your life asleep or you'll miss something. but you've forgotten how to open your eyes so you're trying to shake yourself awake, trying to stimulate your mind with loud noises or bright light but the bright light blinds you and you're opening your eyes without seeing and you're touching fire without feeling and it's still so much nothing that it no longer seems to matter.

so there's a hospital down the road and the doctors look familiar with their kind smiles and passionless eyes and you know they don't care but they'll pretend to. and you don't know why you bother, but your father insists and his hand on your back isn't letting you turn around, so you look at them in their stark white coats that are supposed to blind you but they don't. they don't because you can't see them anyway, just their shadow on that cream wall that looks like it's had too many coats of paint. but your father talks, low and secretive like he's ashamed to be there, and the words spin around you like a thousand demons, words like 'again' and 'we tried' and 'what happens next'. and the doctor tells you to go home, to come back tomorrow, and you know if you could you'd never go back but your father has your car keys and tells you to get some rest, but you can't sleep because you can't relax because you've been sleeping your whole life away and nothing really matters, does it? and you tell the people who matter, the people who will miss you, but that's not your parents and you know they won't miss you, it's just one more way to ship you off, but the people who matter don't care anymore, you've cried wolf too many times before, so you're telling brick walls and crying yourself to sleep in the bathtub and pretending like the people who you want to love are the people who love you back.

and maybe there's something in the sterile feeling of white sheets turned pink with too many washings and too many bloodstained mornings, and maybe there's something in the blinding light of a coverless lamp, and maybe there's something in the harsh cacophony of a phone turned on too loud, but it doesn't matter because it'll all be gone tomorrow and you'll be gone tomorrow and who knows when you'll see it again.