Cease

There is no tenderness
in this form of illness—
if you don’t go off
chasing after your death

sympathy runs dry.

I cannot go to the hospital—
I am not imagining
what bus teeth feel like

or counting stones
with the currents in mind.

This is the worst trick—
that nothing matters
but you are too tired

to leave

or even think of leaving.

But all that’s left
is thought—

the bulbous phone battery
sure to be giving
off radiation,

the conversation snippets
you don’t want to
replay anymore
real or imaginary,

the sole focus on
the clock while it
tracks down your
cigarettes.

The unending repetitions.

All I am left
is thoughts like
jumbled extension cords
& the unfixable
tangled ball of

periods, commas,
& quotation marks.

Each ending of a sentence
gripping onto the next
with little fishing hooks
in the roof of my mouth.

I must have dozens.

I don’t want to die
but my exhaustion is
making me think
of jellyfish—

how they decide,
with no thought at all,
to stop existing

& their bodies just follow suit.