By: Rachel Brown

I can almost taste your lips when I think of you, the feel of your skin pulsating against mine.

The book in my hand paints landscapes of your face such that I cannot read the real words written.

And why does no one wonder why this subway is so fucking loud, banging and throwing flashes of you around my head and in my eyes so that I can't see, I can't breathe, all my senses are eclipsed by you.

The curve of your lips etched everywhere I look, in windows and the spirals of my retina that project outwards until there is you and only you spinning and looping in front of me.

The feet in my shoes feel no purpose, bumping on the floor like lead, pulling me down.

I find myself traversing the paves of my mind unable to reach a destination, the creases in my thoughts filled with the crumbs of your very existence.

Is everything supposed to hurt like your head is imploding and your heart is combusting until eventually your lungs dissolve.

How can pain be felt when there are no wounds, my only scars, the sketches of contortion and agony that make up the folds of my face.

Released from this turmoil would I inhabit a space, fulfil a role, or would I cease to belong, bound to this ever growing pit of futile souls at which my heart and mind and body and being have resided to.

There is no apparent purpose for me now.

This subway rattles and chokes, carrying me round, and round — moving, and yet never on.