Postcard from Limbo

I sit on the couch
searching for the line between
suffocating and barely breathing,
narrowing it down to fractions of decimals,
just to see how still and silent
I can physically be
because there is so much world
and only so much of me.

So maybe, if I dissolve
into the white, buzzing static
of my living room
I won’t have to think about
work,
or laundry,
or deadlines,
or groceries,
or the nebulous but seemingly inevitable concept of everyone I love dying before me,
or taxes.

Maybe, if I can manage
to align my brainwaves
with the hum of my AC unit,
I could become less of a person
and for once not have to come to terms
with the fact that
I don’t want to kill myself,
but I wouldn’t particularly mind dying.

Nicole Cox is an undergraduate writer currently attending Utah State University, and is set to be published in the Fall 2021 issue of The Sugar House Review for her co-authored poem, Train. When she isn’t reading or writing, she likes to bake (and only burns them half of the time).