It's been a long that that it's been a long time. 

I write you from a hotel room, the terrible fleeting truth
that I am, in fact, unkillable.

That is not to say I cannot die
which I have so many times
ripped with the pain, shaken and broken beyond
the barrier where it no longer exists
and there exists only a pulse, growing louder and 
dissolving, harmonizing my form and lost heartbeat
into pins and needles -- mindplugs of exhilaration 
falling backward and upward
as the masts of ships in a storm;
real: a bare and naked hub
of everything I am, was and will
into joyous, promised warmth
A homecoming. 
finally. 

but the zenith, the 'finally' -- the echo, the form
it will not dissolve.
it reverberates into a sickness, reigns biting down into my shoulders
a sickness
a wrapt coldness
piercing and searing me 
before I could drift on to join the others.
snapping back, as an elastic
refilling me with form
and anguish
so familiar
and cold

         and cold
 

so fucking              cold

breathing.
choking.
splashing in the flavor of beading of blood
resealed and stitched, dizzy somehow
left on my own

it's the kind of business with a weight better buried
(as I've prayed I might finally be)
but for now, I must be carried
by this
AFFLICTIOUS 

THING

a cruelty that a god might go on calling living.

What a gift; what a curse.