Months go by
Even years
I don't feel a thing.
Except for a clinical tingling in my fingers
A gnawing tug inside my stomach
Or an invisible bruise or two
Across my fluid torso
I don't feel much.
Tonight the shuffle plays a song
I first heard when I was learning how to be youthful
How to make men mad
Or happy
How to imagine again a world
Centered on myself and my loved ones
I hear the notes and I'm thrown back
To my dark room in a different corner of the country
In a house that is empty now
And belongs to someone I have never seen, and might
Never know.
I keep awaiting a pinch
A kiss or a slap or a punch
I feel nothing
But a faint sense of time scratching its nails on my face.