Empty Marrow

You wake up wrong.

Air slips past your skin,

indifferent,

and your breath follows,

a borrowed motion

in a jigsaw that does not come with closures.

Your hands twitch.

They are not yours.

They lift, drop, graze, scratch —

gestures you never willed,

as if your nerves were conduits

for something passing through you.

You try to speak.

Your tongue twists.

The words are familiar

and alien,

at the same time,

almost as if

echoes of conversations

that never belonged to you,

yet persist anyway.

Your chest heaves.

Heart beats in resonance

with something larger,

something that does not notice

that you exist.

Pain, hunger, thought,

they flow through you,

but none of it is yours.

You touch your arm.

The ruin of a scar pulses under your fingers

like a living thing,

reminding you

that even memory is not yours.

The body scripts verses

of moments you never commanded.

You stare at the mirror.

It does not see you.

It only registers

awareness passing

through a vessel

it will soon discard.

Your skin prickles.

Your bones ache.

Your pulse stammers.

Your voice, your hands, your thoughts,

even the scar that pulsed,

all dissolve into a rhythm

that never needed you.

A weight slides through your chest,

soft, patient, inevitable.

It coils in your bones,

presses against your lungs,

a warmth that is not yours,

a presence that crawls through you and stays.

And you are not sure if you will see the end coming.

That, 

that is what makes you afraid.

Afraid.

Really afraid.

That you’ll be gone. 

Not with a bang,

but like a whimper.