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Today is the longest day of the year.

I sit here, on my bed - and wait.

There is nothing else to do but wait.

My body is seized up, incapable of movement – yet every other time an involuntary spasm courses through my veins, up my neck, down my spine, into my toes, and I twitch, and it does not feel like my limbs are my own. My teeth are ground into dust from the pressure and there is a constant lump in my throat that I cannot swallow no matter how much water I guzzle down.

My stomach is turning.

It is the only thing that is turning in this quiet, empty room, and you can hear it so loud I feel as though it is trying to drown out the noise of the universe itself.

I threw up twice already, and if there was anything left in me, I would throw up a third.

My breathing is whistled, my chest feels like it’s heaving in scorched air.

It is the longest day of the year, and I wait, and I wait, and I wait.

This morning, I spoke with my mother. She reminded me what day it was. I nodded and I wanted to pretend.

This afternoon, I had an argument with my father. He talked to me, and I screamed at him, and I wanted to scream forever.

Months had passed between these events.

This evening, my sister gave me a hug, and felt my body shaking. A year had passed between then and now, and the clock reads 20:58.

It is the longest day of the year, and I wait, and I wait, and I wait.

There is nothing I wish for more than to be asleep. Time passes different when you sleep. I am an insomniac.

I cannot sleep. I never could.

I wait, and I wait, and I wait.

My stomach feels heavy. My chest is heavy. I am so, so indescribably heavy. My knees are giving out from underneath my weight.

I wait, and I weight, and I wait.

It is the longest day of the year, and the sun is still up. More stubborn than ever, it fights against the night, and the screech of late evening birds is painful as the light inevitably loses. The rays go down, screaming and tearing, and I do not see it for my blinds are closed. The dogs begin to bark.

The night falls like a sentence, and it is longer yet, and the minutes take centuries, and the seconds take eons.

I wait, still. I wait.

The carbon dating on my bones reads billions of years, and moving them around feels wrong. A single blink removes mountains from the landscape; a single breath raises them up again. I think forever is not that long. I think eternity would pass sooner.

I wait. I wait. I wait. I wait.

It is the longest day of the year.

My heart beats so, so slowly. Every single time it hits against my ribs I am reminded why I’m here. Why I wait. Why there is nothing else that could be done. I wish to be asleep. I wish my heart beat not.

I would not call this painful, but it is excruciating. I would not call this sad, but it is pitiful.

My aching head is on fire. My putrid thoughts spin around, a carousel of doubts, and lies, and panic. What else is there to do but think. What else is there to do but wait.

I am so tired.

I wait.

My skin turns pale, and the bruises on my knuckles fade. The stars light up one by one by one by one. I watch every single one of them die. I watch them all be born.

The space between my ribs is large. It is filled with what is left when the atoms swallow up each other and the largest planet in existence bursts like a balloon. A child’s laughter dies, and the music playing on the old gramophone starts up again, only to forever skip the exact same beat.

I lose my gravity and I begin to suffocate. I exhale. I inhale. Oxygen forgot its own existence and can no longer enter through my lungs. Time does not move forward. It never did. Nothing ever did.

My movements, frantic in their stillness. My veins break open, leave room for moths and caterpillars and the sun. I disintegrate. A thought pounds against my cranium. My larynx closes up.

I can no longer see.

I can no longer hear.

I could never speak to begin with.

The fireworks go off like tears, and stream down the ugly black sky, streak of orange, red, blue, green, gold. I think it no longer matters, and my fear is overwhelming. I think I no longer care, and I do not remember what it was like to look at my own face in the mirror.

The day is nearly done and I no longer think.

I am but a shell, bursting through with emptiness, and hurricanes, and the sound of waves, and the deep cosmic colors, invisible to the naked eye, and the fullness of the moon, and the stench of the beach, and the rich roundness of the rain, and the alcoholic coldness of the snow. And the grass, and the bees, and the clouds, and the pavement, and the rocks, and the wood, and the pain, and the sorrow, and the fire, and the sparks, and the love, and the glass.

The wind chimes sound like sobbing.

The shell is gone and I am left alone. That is all I ever wanted.

I am so terrified of loneliness it hurts.

The whole entire world is looking, and it waits for what I will do next.

I am alone in my room.

I am done waiting.

The longest day of the year is over.

Today, it is my birthday

I just have to go through it again next year.