Somewhere above me a life is happening in boots — and not the cute kind.
My stomach knows that language — conjugates it downward through the ceiling, through the plaster, through the years,
until the room rearranges itself around an older room, the one with the low light and the counting.
This is worse than the mouse in the wall.
Which object to dodge? Which glass thing will break? The blame lands before the shards do.
Which belt will slap and say this will hurt me more than you.
My body doesn’t ask what year it is. It asks what comes next.
I sit very still the way small things do when the large thing has not yet decided which way it is going.
The nausea is just the answer arriving before the question.
But I am not small anymore.
I have a door. I have keys. I have legs that belong to me and a street outside that does not know any of this history.