Inside and Outside
You know it’s a wall because it keeps the outside outside and the inside inside. Not that outside is bad it’s just that you want someplace warm and inside where you can wrap up inside your blankets where you can curl up inside your skin where you’re nice and safe inside your head and nothing bad can get you inside your thoughts.
This is me and that’s not me.
And I like some things as I lie here trying to sleep but sleep is outside and it won’t let me in just like I won’t let in the mice or the lizards or the cockroaches that might be crawling all about me. Trying to get inside. But then I wonder what would happen if a cockroach crawled inside my mouth while I’m asleep and what if I crunched it and swallowed it before I realized and why are they so awful shiny it just makes you think this universe is an instrument of horror just because somebody let the cockroaches skitter-skutter their way inside existence…
At least I’m safe and sound inside my thoughts.
Back when I was a little boy no more than ten I found a dead cockroach inside my room. Lying on its back on the floor and it was nasty and gross and that awful shiny and I threw it away in the toilet. But my sister who was older and bigger and real smart told me if we saw one cockroach there were more of them living inside the walls. So I would try to sleep at night and the roaches in the walls would climb inside my mind and I would imagine them crawling all over each other and making that awful clicking sound and moving too fast and they were that horrible red-brown and they would crawl all over me and I would try to get away or smash them but there were always too many of them and they would crawl everywhere on me, outside my body along my skin, roaches on my feet, roaches creeping up my back, roaches along my cheeks…
My thought really are my own and I’m sure there’s something real I can call “me.”
And they would get inside my mind because I would imagine them crawling all over my body and then burrowing inside my ears and inside my nostrils and inside my mouth. And it was so horrible I’d want to die just from thinking about it and it would keep me awake so I’d lie there listening to make sure there were no cockroaches but even though there weren’t I would think every sound was a cockroach coming to crawl on me and I couldn’t bear it and I thought why would God make such awful awful creatures inside his beautiful world so even when I would get to sleep those horrible cockroaches would be inside my dreams…
These thoughts are my thoughts and I’m sure nobody is making me have them…
But later on I learned a little about science and then I learned cockroaches only thrive in areas with human habitation or at least there are a lot more of them around cities and homes and dumps and anywhere where humans throw away their trash. So really it’s like they’re using us to keep going and all of them are alive because they’ve worked their way inside our system and there’s no way to get rid of them and don’t you see for God’s sake we’re feeding them and there’s only so very many of them because there’s so very many of us and…
This is me and that’s not me.
This is me and that’s not me.
This is me and that’s not me…
But don’t you see we’re all caught up in the same system because us being here in our cities means they’ll be there eating our trash and so when they’re eating our trash and crawling into our mouths and ears it’s only because we’ve produced them and by God don’t you see we are them and they are us and how am I supposed to live with myself or even go to sleep when my own existence makes my skin crawl and all I want to do is hide away somewhere safe where nothing and nobody will ever get inside because I just want to feel okay and I just want to feel normal and I just want everything to stay fixed where it is and never ever ever ever-ever evereverever change!
At least I’m safe and sound inside my thoughts.
They say they’ll survive if a nuclear war happens.
Hush!
Did you hear something…?
*scurry*