Wounded

A regular day at the grocery store

I'm doing fine at the grocery store
To drift around under the mondaine white light makes me feel like
one of them
A regular person with a regular shopping cart walking in the regular aisle for regular groceries
Do they believe me yet?

Chips!
I stretch my hand and feel excited at the normalcy of my reaction
Are they looking? I bet they are
They look and without second thought they hum in agreement "one of us"
I feel the bag of chips
But I'm not the only one
At once I find a child's determination to get to the chips first
And I'm ready to fight
But first
I follow the line of this lil impostor to the source just to suddenly
feel heavy

the child's hand, not the one on the paprika chips (did I mention the flavor before this?) but the other one
It is connected to a big giant
its hand
Its hand
connected to safety makes my hand feel like nothing but bones I carry around
I'm the impostor
My safety didn't look this sweet, it looked mad
It didn't say I love you and didn't hold my hand
My safety felt scary and this one doesn't
And I don't
understand
why
I have this restless feeling that they know what I'm thinking, I've been staring for too long, and the chips are still in place, but I can't bring myself to fight for them when all I've learned what to do is run
Horrible thoughts that cross my mind
I want to crawl inside the child
I want the child to crawl in me
I want to wrap myself in safety's warmth
Though I sense my body isn't made to fit such coats
I have no need for those after all
They're itchy and they feel wrong
And the people that like them should just go ahead and die
I'm 24
Never once needed a coat
And I'm fine
Except for now

I'm walking to the line
looking for normalcy
And so I stand still but not too still, just the regular amount of holding still
I have thoughts of things that people think about when waiting in line, like money and lines and paying and grocery stores
and the child, why did the child seem so safe under its own skin? Why did no safety teach me how to hold myself intact? I'm falling apart
I know why
Safety is uncomfortable and wrong, it's immoral and disgusting, your definition makes no sense to me, though I still see it all around me, a sea of things I only see but cannot touch
A floating ghost needs no skin
the coat falls right through
I'm waiting in line to pay
The line moves on and so must I
Step after step after step and NO
There's no circles here in this mondaine line

Stay down!
Get back!

My gaze runs away and tries to escape
I never learned how to fight
And just then I'm tormented by a couple in the line next to mine
he kisses her so softly
A personal attack
The turmoil of the past is swallowing the empty and it's fighting the normalcy of the grocery store
I look straight at them
Fight or flight
When will his hand lift to hurt her
My body ready to react, nothings happening just yet but I'll be waiting
I've seen these tricks before
I've learned to sniff it out
The unsafe safety of love
And that's why
I can't accept that
He doesn't hurt her
He doesn't hurt her
Horrible thoughts that cross my mind
I want to crawl inside myself and rip this hell from me, I am casually burning alive at the grocery store
I want to scream

But instead i only hope the rest can see the smoke escape in every breath I take
*breathe*

I'm fine
Except for all the time
The cashier asks me whether I wish to pay by card or in cash
I answer card
How regular
How casual
Just a regular payment for regular groceries in a regular grocery store
There's nothing regular about this
Nothing even happened,
What am I boiling over for?

As I put the groceries in my bag I fantasize about stabbing the turmoil right in the heart right there
at the grocery store

How the police would arrive and talk to the customers one by one
How they'd piece the clues together and understand
How they'd look at the connecting hands and connect it back to my sole ability to disconnect
How they too would notice the couples kiss and ask them to put
the knife
down
for to them itd be as is for me
a personal attack
right there, at the grocery store

How the report would say
That the triggers were endless in such a casual place
Coming to the hypothesis
That I really was fine
Except for every day
Except for every time

I'd find myself at the grocery store