Same Fog. Different Year.

I feel your familiar, cold, hands clasp my shoulders...

I turn around, look into your swollen eyes...

You've been so lonely without me -

And I've been so...  myself? without you...

But the arms feel familiar - familiar like the strained cough at the end of a mucus-filled cold, like the slush at the end of March, like the dirt in your face when you've been thrown down again...: the sound of schoolbooks scattered across the hallway.

I turn away from you because your breath is foul and putrid and you are scaly, ugly, awful, ooze of numbness...

I wrap my shawl tight around my thin, pale, shoulders...  steel my body from your wooing

Shout:  I don't need you.

[pop another pill]

[punch the Raging Pillow]

Crawl backwards...

                   back
                                             slide.

[the Grey inside is peaceful].