untitled death has a way of turning you inside out: lungs thrust from your chest, through your mouth, forcing you to watch yourself inhale and exhale a perpetual vomit of oxygen and carbon dioxide because external lungs with wide-reaching grasping, gasping branches are the only way you can get nearly enough. your lungs dangle there in the air aching and inept, and your thoughts become the only thing you can see and your surroundings the only thing you can thinkyour brain becomes a popped kernel of corn that you have to manage and manipulate slowly, delicately so it isn’t misplaced or broken like a piece of chalk or coral, and you helplessly throw thoughts at objects and furniture like the ineffectual peanuts you throw at a sleeping elephant when all you need from it is for it to move and it isn’t long before you give up and whatever was still inside seeps out from your eyes like obese slugs, leaving a trail of mucus and memories smeared on your face until you can turn yourself right and you look and act like everyone else, wearing your stains on the inside again
- Caroline Bachmann -
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