For a woman marked by passions, known for flights and fits and furies

What is left when she says no more, too much, I can’t?

August’s child, broiled in heat and turbulence, crisp with strife in sunshine, wants to go to bed.

I constructed an identity reliant on energy and life and an ever-present glow and now I am overripe under the grocery store wax, insides oozy, sweet-smelling rot.

I want to lie on the bathroom floor, feel the cool tile under my palms. To know I cannot fall any lower, cannot slip from this sterile resting place.

I do not need a break or healing or rest. I cannot have any of those, am not capable of halting the jolting pace of my heart.

There is no refilling the cracked and shattered vessel.

Water bleeds out, imprints of yesterday’s loves now mere water stains through a tattered diary. 

At some point, I’ll pull my sticky self off the tiles and in to bed. If I’m lucky, the wind will sing my lonesome love to sleep.