here is what i felt when i moved my consciousness into your body. my skin was smoother and soft, my arms and legs longer like branches, and my knees bent together. i stooped to hug myself, and wrapped my arms gently, and from a distance. i felt what it was like to have loose skin, and my knees hurt. i could only touch things so gently, like my fingertips were glass. here are more things i could’ve felt but didn’t feel in the moment. i could’ve reached into my hair and had it be thick and in need of brushing, and i could’ve felt cold that was unfamiliar to me. i could’ve stood up and looked down at things. i could’ve had a form that tenses at different times.

the hard part is that when i moved into you, i felt so many things that were similar between us, but dissimilar from other into whom i could enter. the way i could laugh at the easy jokes, the echoed phrases, the movement timings, the rhythms. more like me than unlike me.

but i keep you at an arm’s length, as i must. there are schemata in this world that i do not understand that you follow, and i wish not to hurt anyone, so i bear a distance that may look close from the outside, but there’s a barrier in my heart. my heart looks for drinking but is stymied and remains there, looking through a glass case. it thanks me for the opportunity to know you at all;

and when i move my consciousness into your body, i feel the fear that we share.