I miss the forsaken child. He’s me. But I’m not he. I think he may be hiding inside my head with all the others I know are there and cannot find, playing evil tricks on my moods and heartbeat also. I have a universe inside my head. Families huddle there in secret, sheltered places. Civilizations reside. The laws of physics hold it together. The laws of Chemistry keep it going. I have nothing to do with it. No one governs it. Foxy emissaries glide from alleys to archways on immoral, mysterious missions. No one’s in charge. I am infiltrated and besieged, the unprotected target of sneaky attacks from within. Things stir, roll over slowly in my mind like black eels, and drop from consciousness into inky depths. Everything is smaller. It’s neither warm nor cold. There is no moisture. Smirking faces go about their nasty deeds and pleasures surreptitiously without confiding in me. It gives me a pain. Victims weep. No one dies. There is noiseless wailing. I take aspirins and tranquilizers. I am infested with ghostlike figurines (now you see them, now you don’t), with imps and little demons. They scratch and stick me. I’d like to be able to flush the whole lot of them out of my mind into the open once and for all and try to identify them, line them up against a wall in the milky glare of a blinding flashlight and demand:
“All right, who are you? What were you doing in there? What do you want from me?”
They wouldn’t reply.They’d be numberless. I’d find 1,000 me’s.