Low battery

 

The morning after any social event,

memories jumble like a sail blown in the wind.

Flooded with laughter, smiles, and love.

 

And yet straight away I inspect every memory

for possible failings - did I say the wrong things?

Why couldn't I remember that person's face?

Why didn't I remove my coat? That heavy blanket

against the outside, the quick escape if I need to hide.

Why? Why? Why?

 

This all fades as my muscles scream at me,

a chainsaw cutting through my core,

then pouring salt into the wounds.

 

Social exhaustion is not tiredness,

please don't get these two confused.

And don't assume that I won't want to spend

my time with you just because I am no use

for days afterwards - I still need company.

As shockingly, I am still a, barely functioning, human.

 

But right now, wracked with pain.

The ticking clock sounds like

the bells of Big Ben,

each echoing tick splitting

the atoms of the universe in half.

The hum of my computer

rumbles over like an aeroplane.

Low. Grumbling. Angry.

Blinded by haze, groaning over the strain,

only illuminated by the lightning pain,

like a nuclear bomb going off in my brain.

 

So if I seem quiet, distant, unreachable,

that's because I'm struggling to move at all.

 

Yet society tells me to pull myself together,

fall into another day of chores. Pull on a mask.

 

The allodynia, as my clothes hurt.

scraps of fabric feel like molten blankets,

hot, and weighted. Heavy like my eyelids

as they drag at my ankles, trying to trip me.

 

Thoughts, normally sharp as a dagger,

now only stumble and stagger,

before giving up and sitting, cross-legged,

a child trying to comprehend the day,

but getting lost on the first letter.

Then realising, sitting is too tiring,

so laying flat intead.

 

Gravity pulling the last dregs of energy

from my pores, sap from a tree trunk.

I collapse into a fitful dream like

a drunk, dreaming of pink elephants.

 

Muscles tighten and cramp,

avalanche pain pulls tears from my eyes.

And the sun aims its flaming rays at me,

blinding me, until I'm left, a mass on the floor,

 

begging

 

for

 

release.