I haven’t slept in 23 days.
“Randy Gardner stayed awake for 264 hours (11 days), breaking the previous record of 260 hours held by Tom Rounds.”
Night falls and I find myself wandering through Nevada.
With her it has never been below 98°.
I close my eyes and she is not in Nevada. She is 1,985 miles away.
She sits on the bridge of my nose.
We are never apart.
Weak stomachs and frozen tongues occupy the daytime.
If she were to release my nose, she would seize my head and paint my skull with licorice. She leaves foot prints across my bones.
My skin is the ozone layer and she is Apollo 11. She pierced through me long ago.
I swallowed my teeth.
It has been 8,760 hours since I last spoke.
She whispers to me and cranberry juice drips from my ears.
She says, “Say that to my face and with a smile please.”
I look at the ground.
To look her in the eye would surely kill me.
Her whisper plays from a speaker on repeat. It’s my least favorite song.
No one else hears the song.
She doesn’t hear the song, but she knows that I do.
I break each of my fingers one by one. She smiles as she watches me.
She laughs and eats a handful of tangerine seeds.
I stand in the Mojave desert. She is curled up in my collarbone.
She crawls up to my shoulder and whispers to me,
“24 nights.”
My skin always burns in Nevada.