THE ALLURE OF NONEXISTENCE

I want to get out, run away, go away, escape.

I don’t.

I go home, cook dinner, watch children’s shows, and fake smiles. The ache is there, today it’s my chest, my gut. It’s everywhere and nowhere and I wish I could just hide. If only I was smaller and paper thin. I would fold myself into little squares, tinier and tinier so that my surface space was so inconsequential that you could walk right past me and never know I was there. I could hide between the couch cushions or underneath the refrigerator. I could be a speck of lint you pick off your sweater and toss into the trash.

Forgotten.

All that would hurt less than this.

Exploding would hurt less.