I am the kind of tired that sleep just cannot fix. The kind that crawls across the surface of your skin and sits on your shoulders and sinks its needles into you to draw out every single last drop of blood and with it every single last breath of life and energy and soul and hope.

I am the kind of sad that tears cannot drown. They fall still, always, and in tandem. Each teardrop too frightened to make the journey to my chin alone and so they hold hands on the leap out my red eyelids and they plunge to their demise willingly and bravely and with more grace than I deserve on these cheeks. The kind of sad that hits you like a hurricane and before you have time to adjust your feet against the waves and sea that just won’t stop rising, steals everything you ever knew and washes it back beyond the horizon. I am the kind of sad that sits in shock in that aftermath and the two hands that hold one head in disbelief that the ocean could be so angry after all this time, and direct its wrath so clearly at me.

I am the kind of lost that they just do not make a compass for. Sailors of old would shout at the skies and curse the clouds for hiding their stars and still know with certainty that they knew more than I knew about where they were on this earth. The kind of lost that spins you around 3 times no 4 no 10 with a blindfold and then knocks you down and knocks you out and dumps you miles from nowhere and says simply, Go Home. The lost that has no home because instead of wood beams and concrete floors and matching drapes and perfectly distressed furniture or an old piano bought for too little money and just the right amount of excitement, I had ribs and the way they rose and fell and broke like waves across the shore of pale skin. I had eyes like stormy seas with sunshine piercing through the black in the middle and hair that dropped like smoke around the silhouette of my head on the pillow and framed me in shadows that smelled exactly like my bedroom when I was growing up, like that first night in your old room after so many months away.

I am the kind of homeless that only comes when the last family member has gone away and the last penny has been spent and the dignity has faded and the dirty hand with dirty nails reaches into the dirty air and begs without pride for a scrap, just a morsel of anything, in order to survive. I am the kind of homeless that only comes when the only home I ever wanted to know closes up its doors and boards up its windows and changes the locks and maybe, just maybe changes locations entirely without a forwarding address to ride along with the mail to.

I am the kind of alone that comes when the realization comes that everyone else will step forward and you will not step at all. That they will march happily into the rest of their lives and I am unable to imagine the rest of this breath. The kind of alone that comes as nothing even begins to make sense unless you love someone, but the alone that sneaks up on you when that someone cannot or will not or should not or is too afraid to truly love you back.

I am the kind of silent that only a few places left on this planet know about. The kind that comes when not even an airplane cruising above the frozen clouds disrupts the pure and complete nothingness. The kind of silent that has its own sound and begins to hurt so much that you swear your lonely eardrums will burst. The silence that only comes when the last echo of your own laughter has died and only a memory remains of the voices that used to hum to you and pull you back from the darkest nights and most haunting nightmares.

I am the kind of broken that only comes when so many pieces are shattered off the whole that it forgets it ever painted a picture at all. That it forgets it was ever a cup and that it ever felt your lips hover above the heat of the tea to blow your perfect breath in a simple attempt to cool it just enough to slide down your throat. I am the kind of broken that comes when I’m dropped by hands that just can’t hold me any longer and so they let me fall not by accident but by priority. That something that matters more required holding and there just were not enough fingers or thumbs or palms to fit me into. The slow dropping through space and the crash that scatters me all across the floor. The kind of broken that stays broken because only one set of hands knows the way it was before, and if those hands don’t have the time or the patience or the energy or the courage to do it then broken I will stay and I would so much rather be broken than put back together in the wrong order by the wrong hands with the wrong glue.

I am the kind of empty that comes only when it’s known that I will never be filled again. The kind of empty that, well, there is no kind of empty that even begins to feel how I feel. There is no empty like this, I am inventing it as I go, with each drop of hope that falls out of me and each reverberation of nothing being poured back in. I am empty. I am empty. I am empty.