Free Diary of a Human by Eliza Lentzski Page B

naked for a while. Because I have grown too accustom to my overcoat that shelters and confines me with complacency. I look at you and feel a breadth of emotions unrealized for fourteen months. There is a sadness and pain that comes in your package, but without the rain, the sun would never shine so brilliantly. It blinds me and my eyes well with tears, but I am too encased and enchanted by your light to blink and ease the searing white hot pain.
    I rest my weary head in rough, chapped hands and my brain pounds between my spread finger s. This disease of mine creates painful sleepless night s. But you are always asleep.
    Peaceful, unblemished features that exist much smoother than my tortured contortions. Always sle eping. And I am always awake.
    My love is not unsympathetic to my sleepless rages, only asleep. What comes so easily to her strangles mortals with frustration. I can only sit in my chair beside our bed. My head too heavy for this neck, but not yet worthy of sleep.
     
     
    0.4//distractions
     
    She touched my arm.  She held my hand.  And I held her close to my body as we walked briskly through the biting wind, silent.  The weather put more and more miles between Us.  But in that moment it brought she and I together. 
                  She looked at me, her head resting against the pillow, a small dreamy smile playing upon her lips.  We sit on her couch and she sits too close fo r me to complete my sentence, h er thigh pressing into mine.  Her scent makes me dizzy with dilutions that this is right.  She’s at the end of my fingertips, but then I remember Portland.  And then she talks like she’s a fucking Hallmark card, and my address escapes her memory.
     
     
    0.5//delicate things
     
    When I broke her heart because of you, she was at my feet. I felt her body shake against my leg and the hot tears dampened the unsympathetic floor. I heard her cold, dull voice rasp, "The flowers are dead. There's no water."              
                  "They were already dying," I replied. "I warned you I'm no good at caring for delicate things."
                  I picked up a book, a piece of you, and she hurled it across the room. "My book..." I started to protest. "You hurt my book."
                  "Don't make me remind you of what you have hurt."
             
                  But she smiles and tells me we’re still friends, being used to this position.
     
     
    9

 
    DIARY OF A HUMAN
     
     
     
     
     
     
    1 Winter
     
     
    1.0//life of a writer
     
    Before I find easy sleep, I empty my brain. 
    I wash my face,
    brush my teeth,
    a nd scrutinize myself under the harsh glow of an overhead light. 
     
    As I pad from bathroom to bedroom, I unscrew the bolts that keep this brain within my cranium, slowly feeling the day’s events freeing themselves as my brain slogs from one side of the hollow space to the other.  I reach into the cavern and feel the drama between my fingers, sticky and sweet. 
    I spread my insides out, emptying my thoughts on the recycled page like a woman with her purse on the kitchen counter.  Just a few more shakes and this etch-a-sketch will be prepped for another 24 .
    24 hours of life, a 24-hour sitcom.
     
     
    1.1//lessons
     
    It’s a good thing I’m an excellent swimmer.  Mom and Dad would be happy they paid for those lessons so easily on in my life or I might drown in the depths of your sea-green eyes.
    I never took lessons on love though.  I guess Mom and Dad had their own priorities in mind for me.
    Piano lessons, gymnastics, Girl Scouts – but who would teach me about Love?  I’ve got a 4.0 in Science.  I can tell you all about the human heart, but who can tell me about my own?
    Anatomy might not be my specialty, but Emotions are my worst subject.
     
     
    1.2//nothing gold can last
     
    Like freshly fallen snow that remains undisturbed, so you now rest nestled under the blankets of our