I hit it low. So low that the ground no longer shook beneath me. It shook above. And the world around me took on a new form. Shapeless and liquid. The walls slipping over themselves to fall in a puddle on the floor. A blur through half closed eyes. Time and its indelible mark on my soul began gasping for air. Clawing at me. Reaching for my eyes as I put it out with the heel of my shoe. A forgotten match left to simmer in the mud.

I hit the bottom with the kind of silence that comes only with death. The last breath of a distended limb that was never noticed in the first place. Just discarded. With the wetness of muted sound and unfamiliar cries. Coming from my lips? No. No…that is not my voice. Not my mouth. Not my fists beating the cold tile floor. That girl is alone. That girl is miserable in a way that I could never be. Not me. My world isn’t spinning in slow motion with pieces flying from their foundations in self-destructive patterns. With faces swimming through a mucous-like pool of air around me. Voices hissing, whispering, torturing. “Girl…you hit it low alright.”

That is not me. Dieing. That is not me. Melting into the unforgiving floor. That is not me. Wishing the world would simply give up for me. No, not me.