Chomp: The Limbic Mechanics of Surviving the Agony of Hindsight

But look at the teeth marks

on the conscience. Look at the bruise.

This nausea is the only honest thing I own.

To swallow a pill to numb it, to beg for the anesthetic of forgetting,

is to stitch the eyelids shut while the house burns down again.

No. Let the bile rise. Let the panic sweat soak the mattress.

This is the violent, necessary labor of waking up.

You have to dive into the wreck of your own negligence,

you have to run your bare hands along the crushed, jagged metal,

and let the guilt eat you alive

until you are stripped down to bone and open, staring eyes.

This is not a fever that will ever break.

This remorse is not a seasonal visitor; it is a permanent organ transplant.

A heavy, iron lung breathing for me in the dark,

pumping the cold, sharp air of consequence through my veins.

I will drag this heavy, wet sack of knowing

through every Tuesday, every August, every morning left to me.

The pain is the non-negotiable price of the ticket.

It is the long, terrifying work of staying awake.

A brutal, enduring sacrament.

Now, the mirror of the mind shatters.

The bite of the absolute.