Under the skull’s top and
buried in the wet jelly
is where I live in the reptile neighborhood.
I lie on a flat rock
and imagine the sun is piercing
all the way through to warm me enough
to strike back
at the pain and danger
all around me.
Then you say it’s the jelly
that’s making all the horror
real, and that I’m as much
the jelly as the reptile raging
within it. I am unsure — it feels
more and more that I am living
somewhere else, not in the body
or the brain. That I only inhabit them
as needed and my true home is elsewhere.
I am unsure if I have ever been the reptile
now that I consider it — it is possible
all I know about myself
is an overlay of myths upon mystery.
I only know I am scared tonight, my teeth
on edge, slightly bared, waiting to tear free.
Dark Matter 
November 20th, 2020 at 3:03 pm
Got a chill, even shivered from this one.
I used to feel like I had jello in my core and it wouldn’t take much stress
to make it dissolve. Eventually, I found something diamond hard that wasn’t going to melt or run or let me down in the hard times. No longer feel that I might self destruct when I slide down into that dark pit of despair. Been there, done that enough times to trust I’ll deal with whatever lurks there and find my way back into the light. But this triggered memories of those years of feeling too fragile to keep on keeping on. Somehow your descriptions of your journey almost always strike a familiar note.