empty inside

I don’t like feeling empty inside myself. I have pulled my organs out and washed them under scalding hot water, scrubbing dish soap in the membranes, wondering if this counts as time wasted. I was surprised that the membrane didn’t break but glad it had something to hold onto.

When I go out the door something feels off in my gait, the muscles contracting wrong. I try to place myself within a singular cell there - to see why I would be failing to complete this simple task. Was it laziness? Fatigue? A failure on my own part to be up to standards or had I just been used up completely - to pull and release indefinitely as part of a body in which I was but a minute part, how could I feel much more than unimportant? 

No one wakes up with all the wires connected, though.

And then I forgot all about it when I sat down in the driver's seat, neurons stimulated with the fixation on somewhere to go. In the morning I had been going back and forth if I wanted someone else to join me - did the car need to be so empty inside? But when I stared at the vacant passenger seat it was mildly relieving to know that I could avoid the stress of empty air in the presence of two people because what could I possibly have to say to anyone.

At a cafe I get myself a coffee and a muffin. Someone told me to start the day filling myself up so as to sustain myself. Did you know how much energy goes into each movement, each thought, each unconscious habit that you partake in dozens of times a day? As the organs connect and all your daily systems which keep you alive continue indefinitely (you think), you need to put more in, fill yourself up. We are not meant to run on empty.

But when I sip from the cup and recall my organs stretched out across the drying rack I feel a bit anxious. The bottom of my feet burn - am I leaking all the way through? I rise from my seat, look at the floor, and see it is all clean and dry. So are my hands. Actually, my eyes feel uncomfortably dry. Does one blink on empty or does it require too much energy?

I go back home and resolve myself to the kitchen, holding a glass of water in front of the sink to cyclically empty and fill. When the other people who live here come out, I am told to move myself because there are things to be washed. They glance with dissatisfaction at the filled up drying rack - can I put that away? No one wants to see that. What is emptied is simply displaced; perpetual occupation by the law of physics and now my arms are itchy. Suddenly I remember skin is the largest organ and I haven’t showered in days.

I go into the laundry room, bring out a basket, and gently place my essentials before carrying it all upstairs. In my room there is a shelf lined with jars which have been relentlessly disinfected, a lovely shine which starkly contrasts the litter of human nature on the floor - books of read, clothes half worn, old gifts from friends half remembered. I pull the jars down one by one and fill them in the same manner - each organ contained in what was once empty and of course I don’t like how I feel but dammit it is hard to be so filthy and easy to put what is clean in a place so safe that no one else will ever want to touch it again.

I need to shower. The sound of the water hitting the body, so empty inside, means nothing. But I didn’t lock the door and I didn’t hear the screaming so when one of the other people who lives here comes in responding to the trigger and I am shocked not just by their physical presence but by a look of sad shock in their eyes. What are you doing? I look at my arm and see some of the skin peeling up. I just wanted to be clean.