Geisterwalzer

So enough, then. Enough of that automatic breast-beating, this eternal leaning-over-backward, every thought of my childhood, my family, my country, my heritage warped forever. Except that taking this on—unsure even of what “this” is—scares and exhausts me into sleepless nights, into reckless experiments with oblivion, into relentless disgust with the effort not to just let it all be, to draw instead on what’s buried inside me, covered solidly as with damp earth, a forever-new grave under thin rain.