Dear Whoever You Are, Once again, I fell to sleep, eventually. The amount of pain I felt was beyond my tolerance for accepting it as 'just pain' and rather, I believed it to be mental illness. Things will never end will they? But you knew this, know this. I wonder who is the teacher? Is it you or the devil? In the morning I wake to realization, that kind of nausea that everyone knows. It will be there for some hours. It is that pattern that I've learned to live with, not an old friend but a regular visitor. A mailman or garbage collector. It is almost a hobby but like stamps, filled with a certain amount of dread, a certain amount of fascination. The sadness that started in the heart and went into the tummy, ends up in the hands. Circles back into the heart and runs the circuit until it has divested of the pertinent electrons responsible for the distribution of grief. Grief? The losses endured. The losses of things no longer even there to remember let alone to grieve. Ancestors. They are there but no longer have names. Whoever you are, my question is this: have you felt your skin on inside out yet?