In a hotel
the walls of each room are lined with ticking bombs hidden in the cupboards and the pantry and under the beds and in the closets
There is not a single moment to catch my breath-
I have to run from room to room
defusing the bombs with an instruction manual but it's all written in a language I don’t understand
So I give up. I’m just a kid I don’t want to learn how to read this I shouldn’t have to learn how to defuse these bombs
But when the stars align and the moon is in phase, time fractures and I split in two.
And – rarer still – when time is sewn back together by some cosmic entity sometimes someone else overwrites me.
This ego pops two sticks of strawberry gum in his mouth, cracks his knuckles, and gets to work. He folds the laundry, cleans the floors, and repaints the walls, covering the bombs, all at the same time. He has five arms and wheels instead of legs. And a better brain. He doesn’t worry about eye contact or whether he is talking too loud or too quiet or maybe the sign-off in that email he just sent was too informal.
He is the voice in my head that I want to listen to but I usually can’t hear. He calls people out on their bullshit because he doesn’t have to take it. The sitting with the pain part is a problem for Jeckyll, not Hyde. Hyde craves fireworks and blood. He wants that feeling of shattering glass, breaking things permanently, control. That’s what he wants the most: control. He is made of stone, iron-plated. Slap across the face, filth out the mouth, middle finger out the car window. It feels good in the moment but
After Hyde is gone I am alone with my thoughts and a pitch black room. The air smells like gunpowder, and it’s not a smell you can air out. My clothes are in shreds and my body is cut and bruised and worst of all: I am all alone. There is no one else left and it’s my fault. and the sun is either rising or setting outside I can’t tell. Maybe I will sleep. Maybe if I sleep for long enough it will all go away