still born

i am a stranger to my own life.

more often than not, i feel fine. but those extraneous minutes and hours are so painful...and that pain runs so deep; i don't know how i'm going to tolerate it until the moment passes.

i want to rip into myself and pull my body inside out. shake out the pain, the regret, and the sorrow like stray crumbs. pull chunks of flesh away from myself, throw it aside, and sift through the remains in a search for that thing that is causing this pain. it seethes, it bulges, it spreads.

life is an emotional labor, with each painful moment a mental contraction. the pain arrives in intervals and i scream for some alcoholic epidural to numb me; it passes. and then surges once again. i can't see the road in front of me, the tears are blinding.

but in this instance of labor, the birth is nothing full of life and beautiful. it's stale. it's heavy. it's still born.

right now, i don't know how i can stand this feeling. i need this to pass.