i have a theory, i sprung a few words on a flute and they tasted the sweetest they could ever taste, i whispered noises into the wall and i couldn't stomach the half-eaten pasta from a year that I was supposed to make someone, the orange cat in my dream thinks i have abandoned it, but why was i naming it blue & pink? my friend said that my migraine is travelling from my head to my knees and that's why i always fall and cannot stand straight up, i forgave the words that the flute couldn't sing because it was a broken bone, and it should've been left with those dogs that chewed on my face and my blurry vision makes it easier for me to say that i imagined it all, but I have a theory, and i cannot put it into flasks and under a microscope to dilute the parts that were masked and the parts that weren't said, but were seen, i have a theory, and i think I'll forever be tasting metal in my mouth when i try to name what was once beautiful, i think the windows in my room know the exact shape of my silence, and the air bends when i try to tell it a story, i think i have been writing the same sentence for years and it keeps splitting itself in two, i think the hands on the clock have been laughing at me because time has refused to sign my letters, i think the roots of the trees i pass by are tangled with my veins and that's why my feet feel so heavy, i think i was supposed to leave the light on for someone, but instead i swallowed it and now my chest keeps flickering and I wonder if electricity is mocking me, i think i am building a museum of ghosts that only speak when i close my eyes, i think the theory is leaking from the corners of my mouth and no one is catching it, i think the mirrors are conspiring against me because my reflection keeps stepping out at night, i think the ground memorized all the times i collapsed on it and now it keeps calling me back, i think the birds outside are spelling my name but the wind erases it before i can read, i think my ribs are hollow pipes and every time i breathe it's just another unfinished song, and the city has been rearranging itself behind my back and that's why i get lost on streets i grew up on, i think i was born with too many echoes and not enough voices, every dream i forget waits in a pile somewhere, screaming to be remembered, i think i stitched my own shadow wrong and now it doesn't follow me, i have a theory that divinity is hidden inside ordinary suffering because nothing else survives this long, i think the sky bruises itself every evening just to mirror my body, i carry the weight of unopened letters in my spine and that is why i cannot stand tall, i think the rain has memorized my handwriting because it always falls in cursive, the silence in my throat is heavier than all the words i've ever spoken, i keep hearing footsteps behind me and maybe they are mine, maybe they aren't, i think my dreams are rehearsing without me and when i wake up they've already performed, I think the pigeons outside convenience stores are actually philosophers punished for arrogance, because they pace in frantic little circles like they know something catastrophic that cannot be translated, and that laughter and vomiting are cousins, both leaving tears in the eyes and arriving violently when the body cannot hold itself anymore, in a similar manner, nicotine and heartbreak share a publicist because both convince otherwise intelligent people to return repeatedly to things actively shortening their lifespan, i have a theory that the people carrying the most tenderness often become the most fluent in irony, as if sorrow learns to slip on itself and call it humor because if you can make somebody laugh before they notice the bleeding then you can technically buy yourself a few more minutes of being loved gently, and maybe that is all humor really is, childhood wearing a small birthday hat and asking if anybody minds if it stays for dinner, though it was never truly invited, but still learns how to sit quietly at the edge of the table without making itself obvious, i have a theory that the promise you stitch into your bones to never smoke does not break, it dissolves, seeping into the chest like something learned by accident, until it becomes cigarette smoke resting inside the heart, taking the shape of an old lover's smile, quiet and unfamiliar, as if even vows know how to corrode gently and still remain at home inside you, I think i swallowed too many stars and now my stomach burns with constellations, i think i have a theory, and it keeps folding over itself like a sheet of paper that refuses to tear, and it will follow me until even forgetting forgets me, dragging its feet across the floorboards when the house is quiet, it whispers to me at the edge of sleep where the ceiling begins to bend, and stains the letters i never sent, it curls itself into my bloodstream until i cannot tell where it ends and i begin, and it hides behind the curtains waiting for me to pull them back, and follows me through the mirror when the lights go out, i have a theory, and it will not stop writing itself on the inside of my skull and i will never be free of it, it wraps itself around my wrists, and makes me carry the grief all by myself, because putting it all on someone else might just increase its volume and weight, I don't even know if pain works like that, if it stretches itself when it's shared with someone else, or is it contained? the theory has learned the shape of my body better than i ever could, it sits in the hollow between my collarbones and hums like an old refrigerator in the middle of the night, and sometimes i think that hum is the only proof i was ever here at all, the theory yells that maybe sorrow rots slower than food does, and that is why my stomach growls like an animal even after i eat, and memory bruises itself against the ribs when it has nowhere else to go, and that sadness learns languages faster than happiness ever could, i think the theory is that god lingers in strange places, in stale utensils left beside sinks at 2 am, in wrinkled receipts at the bottom of coat pockets, in the pause between somebody saying stay and somebody leaving anyway, i think my spine has been slowly replacing itself with stacked porcelain plates and one day somebody will hug me too tightly and hear the entire thing shatter, i have a theory that i became funny because sadness alone was making everyone uncomfortable, because grief in a pretty dress is still grief, but grief telling jokes gets invited to parties, i think that sorrow has no choice but to behave differently inside women, it turns liquid and domestic, it learns how to wash dishes and answer politely and continue existing while actively collapsing, i think my veins are filled with wet cement instead of blood and that is why every movement feels permanent, every goodbye hardens inside me before i can soften it with reason, i think the supermarkets become haunted after midnight, every shopping cart carrying the ghosts of domestic arguments and forgotten grocery lists and mothers silently calculating whether tenderness is affordable this week, and every elevator is deeply embarrassed of human beings because imagine swallowing the same grief over and over every day and still opening your doors politely and that is why I loathe elevators because they remind me of myself, i think grief is deeply theatrical, because why else would it wait until i am brushing my teeth or buying shampoo to suddenly collapse onto my chest like a piano falling from a cartoon sky, I'm sure my organs gossip about me while i sleep, my lungs complaining that i sigh too much, my stomach accusing my heart of poisoning the workplace environment, my brain frantically shredding documents before morning arrives, and the universe keeps sending me people who speak in almosts because certainty would kill me instantly, I think grief becomes embarrassing after enough time passes, people stop treating it like a wound and start treating it like a personality flaw, like eventually you are expected to fold your mourning neatly and store it somewhere invisible, and my sadness keeps changing outfits to avoid recognition, one day anxiety, the next day numbness, the next day a sudden overwhelming urge to reorganize my room at midnight as if moving furniture around could rearrange the architecture of my mind too, i have a theory that every human being is one bad year away from becoming unrecognizable to themselves, and when everything folds back into itself like a tired memory returning home, i am left again at the very first sound, the flute still warm from breath, the air still holding what it once carried so gently, a few words on a flute which tasted the sweetest they could ever taste, but left a bitter aftertaste…