The sun is burning my skin

Ash blowing in the breeze and everyone screaming around me. Sleeping in a bed that’s not my own. The sheets feel dirty even when they’re clean. Shaking hands. Going around the corner to drench my skin in sanitiser until it burns. The cuts opening up. With love and compassion towards a wounded terrain. Falling through the floor when the long silences split open. “You can’t drink without eating here.” I look at the tables of people drinking and not eating. A place where everyone continues doing the things they should be running from. I’ve become possessive of my space in the sun. It has become very important that I retain the space even though my bladder is aching and the sun is burning my skin. I hold on to it for an hour and a half until it suddenly becomes meaningless and I leave. I develop a theory that there is a woman who lives in the second cubicle from the left. I whistle while I think I’m on my own and stop when she’s at home. I have more conversations than I’ve had in two years and forget how to function. My balance goes when I’m talking. I spend the next ten minutes trying to reattach to reality. There is nothing in the universe that draws me in more than a body of water but men are splashing and staring and I’m put off completely. I’ve become very aware of how I look to other people. Shutting my eyes and listening to the breeze wishing more than anything I had a garden and that no one else was in it. Faintly listening to a woman complain next to me. Hearing the money in people’s voices. The smell of fire in the darkness. Passing a room full of bodies pressing against each other. Not seeing a single mask in sight. My clothes smell different when I’m not at home. Every room is so much colder. The toilet looks like one of those pictures of a flight of stairs leading to nowhere. You can’t sit down without your thigh pushing the toilet roll off. You can’t access the flush without shutting the lid. You can’t flush the toilet unless you push your whole body weight against it. I feel like I’m doing a Rubik’s cube every time I pee. The gravel crunching under our feet. Chasing the olives in my pasta around the plate. Wishing I could be part of the coffee ritual every morning. A Danish waiter being very friendly the minute I’m alone. I get into the shower fully clothed and drench myself attempting to turn off a leak. A kink in my hair now. The smell of hotel hand soap. Citrus and something. Pressing my fingers to my nose. A little boy going round every table in the restaurant fist bumping each person until he’s ignored by someone who doesn’t see him. Looking at that beautiful cosmopolitan couple and their baby. Panicking that my stomach hurts. There isn’t loneliness like being alone away from home. What else? Feeling sick in the car. OCD disintegrating with every unclean seat. Half asleep. Rubbing red paint into my cheeks.