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the way the world ends

I am not ready for the way the world ends. Things fall apart the way you close your eyes before sleep, like a

deliberate release, giving yourself up
to an empty space you and only you recognize. There are shadows everywhere. The way my thoughts separate: little pinpricks bursting in the midst of blank and blank and blank

and the intense pulsing of heartbeats bulging at all the edges of my skin where it has all gone
wrong.

When I was younger I played with these little wood blocks with stars and moons cut into it, and the pieces fit exactly right. But why is it that now that I have shed the past nothing slots together anymore?

I am holding elbows and knees and the extra slabs of my stomach together like it could
force the squares into triangles and the ovals into circles. The world taught me to sew

one stitch at a time, through blood and bones and muscles. But the way the world ends-- like the careful seams breaking and the edges dissolving into
nothing and just eyeballs and single hairs floating away from my outstretched hands.

Opening your mouth to speak and the words are too much for this whatever this is to bear
so you go back to sleep and dream that the world ends or begins. (It's all the same.)

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