New poem! Read it below or listen to the audio version on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/writersam/brain-blade

the word is too big for my mouth
so it stays shut and won’t let anything out
and instead all the thoughts crowd my skull
like passengers being dropped  into a small
room from an escalator
squashed together and asphyxiating.
meanwhile my brain is playing with a blade
fingering the edges, wondering
what it would be like
to press, to gently slice,
to ignore all advice,
to plot its demise,
else the body will get there first.
is it better to surrender the country
before the invasion gets too much?
is it better to stop trying, to spend
energy on living brightly and blindly,
than to expend all resources on surviving?
my brain considers this as it tosses
the knife between its hands,
waiting to stop caring about
whether it grasps the handle in its fingers
or catches it by the blade mid-air,
a perfect curve of blood forming
across its fleshy palm
but never quite getting to that place
of complacency. We are none of us safe,
thinks the brain, though minutes ago
it was laughing manically. The brain thinks:
first it comes for the body, and one day
it will come for me.