It’s nine thirteen and I’m walking through the snow, insane, tissue clutched tight in my right hand. Play melodies. Sing for me. But for now I walk through the snow, insane, clutching a tissue, weeping out through my palm.

Blood is thicker than water. Blood may be thicker than tears. You cry out what you belong to. You never take it back because it soaks through before you can. You leave yourself on shirts on blankets on pillows on shoulders, on tissues through palms.

The door opens slowly. Mechanical. I push at it with my right hand, and I wonder if I am left on it. Sad, lost, gone.

She wraps my palm & finger delicately, sleepily, with care, and I stand there, claiming a new land I will never see again; claiming people who will wash me off, hydrogen peroxide through the sheets. Amnesiac’s ward, forgetting hundreds.

The tissue is on the counter when she finishes forgetting me. I will not even be nostalgia. I will be gone.

But, before I leave, I grab the tissue. Taking what is mine again, in fear of loss.