a collection of thoughts on barely getting by

By Erica Gilman

a collection of thoughts on barely getting by:

1. i may be wearing the same shirt I’ve been wearing for four days straight
but that doesn’t mean i am dirty
it means i’m going through some shit the washer wouldn’t understand.

2. picture this- i throw myself off a cliff and you just stare and scream and scream and scream and scream
and i can hear you screaming until i hit the water.
i hear nothing. you hit the ground
you hear nothing.

3. picture this- i throw myself off a cliff and you just stare.

4. the day i shaved my head, it poured. the sun was out.

5. my tongue is heavy. i’m waiting on a version of myself that i haven’t even invented yet.

6. he once told me my hair smelled like heaven, which is funny because when i sniffed, all i could smell were cigarettes. i couldn’t see him through the clouds.

7. i had a dream last night that i was just a small girl running around after my dad before a summer storm. i’m in pjs with wild hair and i follow him around looking at the sky, but mostly him, mostly him. flashback, try to flash forward, only to flashback. walking backwards is a good way to fall.

8. i think about illnesses, and cancer, and people scared, and children alone, and girls harmed, and women harmed, and men harmed, and slaves, and all the black eyes in the world, and all the broken hearts, and all of the lonely elderly, and the people lost in their head and not in the world. i think i’m lost but i can’t place my finger on why.

9. the art of survival is harder than you expect.

10. fill in the blank ___________________