Inside Out

I was never made to fit. Whatever being that put me together did something wrong. Not enough that anyone else could notice, but just so that I am constantly aware of the flaws inside myself. Bones, that don't fit right and sit uncomfortably at the core of my legs. Ribs feel posed to push out my torso with every inhale. Every solid part of me jabs into the soft flesh around it.

When I notice this too much, my guts begin to twist and worry, bringing themselves to my attention. In an attempt at calming breaths I feel the dampness of my chest cavity. My heart beats either too fast or too slow in place crowded in between my pressing lungs. I imagine how my lungs look and as they fill with air, I see them inflate and deflate inside of me. I feel sick knowing I'm full of meat.

I taste my own saliva and smell my own breath. My teeth fill my mouth and I feel the seam where they split through my gums. I hear the blood rush in my ears and it deafens me. So I try to distract myself, in a desperate attempt to drown out the silence. It never works. My nose and cheekbones encroach on my vision as a constant reminder I exist. I feel the weight of my head and how I don't hold it right, feel the vertebrae of my neck strain,  feel the folds of my chin when the skin touches itself.

None of my skin fits right, too loose, to tight. Each layer of dermis or epidermis rubbing against each other uncomfortably. I see veins and moles and hair and scars scattered across my surface and wonder how deep they go. Where their roots inside me begin. I pick and pull at any part I can get a grip on. I hate how my skin can feel itself. How it crawls across me. How insubstantial it is to hold me together.

I curse whatever made me, for being so carless with the instructions. Who missed the part that lets me settle, that lets my body bare its own weight comfortably. Misplaced bones and a brain that was never made to rest. I sit inside myself in a constant terror of what I am, what I am made of. In fear of the processes that keep me moving and the idea they will one day stop.

I will rot. I am rotting. I will be bones, then dust, then nothing at all.