all i want is to hold myself in, for all my joints to weld together - knee with knee with elbow with the second joints of my fingers with ankle with jaw with wrist. to just clutch and grasp and hug and hold everything together.

because really falling apart isn't what it sounds like. it isn't some cataclysmic shattering of the soul or the heart or whatever body part is supposed to be destroyed. it isn't the vital organs that you lose. it's the bits that protect you that sort of slough off - scrape onto your clothes and turn into dust; ooze out of your pores and flutter off into the open air; stream out of your mouth and turn into vapor. the bits that you never realized were important - the leathery sole of your foot, the soft flesh on the side of your inner elbows and on top of your knees and cloaking your hipbones, the extra skin that forms the wrinkles in the middle of each of your fingers - you begin to miss them. because falling apart doesn't kill you, it just makes you smaller harder older younger weaker stronger - it makes you a stranger.

all i want is to hold myself in.