like snowflakes                         walls spinning and voices humming                 vertigo

            they say you enter the fourth dimension          but really it becomes all           two-dimensional                      so flat              lying there—                sprawled on the floor with walls moving         or maybe i’m the one moving              my memory is sporadic            and all i remember                               which is less     than usual                    is waking up                 and the pain     it was like         it is like            a blackout                    a shattering of glass        like a vase                    it once so perfectly held                                   a bouquet of                roses                but all the roses died                             like snowflakes             they pile up in the worst way               and i am stuck in the second dimension           not moving                  still       and why are they sobbing                    it’s just pain                 not death

                                                                                                but                   you don’t really know what it is           until the autopsy                      and the doctor reads out loud                     she died from—   and once they say that fateful word                  no other words matter i guess                          but they didn’t say                          died                 it’s just pain                 so why does it feel like death                           i watched my vitals before it happened                                             my blood pressure was stable               my pulse-ox dropped and then they put in the anesthesia                    so                         it’s all a guessing game from there                   maybe             

                                                                                                                                    something could have happened                                  and who’d know?

                                                 maybe i                                   died                   that moment on the table                                                                    and maybe i’m still there                 lying                             on the table                  flat       and lifeless                   i thought it was just a tooth                 but maybe they stole my wisdom, too                                            and                              maybe i lost my mind                                                               like a jellyfish                      sprawled on the floor               flopping a bit—           lifeless, really                            whichever way the water takes me                               like snowflakes                         fluttering in the wind                           but at least they feel no pain                            they didn’t tell me dying would hurt so much                   but they didn’t tell me that                   because they didn’t think                                 that i would die                        i don’t think they realize                      they stole the wrong wisdom                                       because they meant the tooth                          but for some reason                       i can’t quite think clearly anymore                                                                                           

                                                                        call it death                  call it pain                    for so long i just wanted to feel            something                    but i regret that now                it hurts a little too much                                               more than i wanted                              the snowflakes             don’t feel like anything anymore                                  melancholy hearts                    sing laments for dead little girls                                    who lost their childhoods                and write          about broken glass                   fractured mirrors that              used to show them the truth                                        and about                    fading roses                             like the color in her cheeks as those snowflakes         tap lightly                     she doesn’t feel it anymore

                                                                                    that’s                                                    not                   what she wanted                      all that she wanted                         was to be wanted