A Thread Runs Through

I just talked to an old boyfriend. The first boy I can say I really loved. Being reminded and looking back, my god I was so open then. So available. Now I have thick crunchy walls. Scabbed up skin that even I have to fight through. Interactions with others are far from connection, they're about survival. Even those I'm close to. Although distance is relative and my close friends, as close as they've ever been, now feel far away. As my cravings grow, my need for skin against me and another mind besides mine makes anything outside my skin feel far away. I can't always heat this body alone. Sometimes, and more often lately, it takes two of us, both your blood and mine. Spoken like this, like flashes of a dream, it comes back to me- how it felt to be then. Only a few years ago. But that's now, in this darkness, safe and alone. When the sun rises and there's light to create shadows again, I lose that recognition and become again, a stranger to myself. I'm terrified- terrified- of having lost that person. Who was able to love so purely, so simply.

Yet today, I unexpectedly ran into a man I knew two years ago who made me act like a fool and beat the steering wheel while driving alone. And in some ways, in my desire for him, I am the same. At least a thread runs through.

And when I step out of the shower, I dry myself off every time in the same way that I always have. I dry my face, then my shoulders and arms, chest and stomach, then I toss my hair in front of me to dry my back, dry each leg as I step out of the shower and then wrap my hair in the towel. And I will always do that exactly. Because it works and I've never had to think about it. It's just the way I move.