I crack my neck and the sound breaks the silence of the room. It’s times like this that an outsider might question the need for the expensive television nestled behind the gates of an espresso colored wall unit. The 80 degree weather has yielded to a more seasonal 40 and the cool wind swirls around me from the open patio doors.

I realize dimly that I am cold, but take no action to correct it. My vision is captured by light glinting off of water in the distance. New ideas for marking skin have been coming to me in my absence from my usual self. They are whispered into my head when I sleep, filter into my brain as I drive, write, eat. My tongue tastes the phantom flavor of blood and I even check the fingers that rest against my lips for injury.

My eyes look down to where you should be, ready to guide this energy away from self-destructive vices, and I don’t find you. Still, the door is open and needs to be closed.

Bloody ideas saturate the gray matter inside my skull until it feels as if my ears should be bleeding out the excess. I stroke the outline of the knife in my slacks with my thumb. My other hand goes to my freshly shorn hair, slides along the back of my neck.

When I stand finally, I don’t walk to where my cell phone rests, nor to the running shoes that beckon me with self-indulgent punishment. I walk to the door, and push it further open. My house needs to be aired.

When I start to run, it is in shoes designed for meetings and dates, in clothing picked for its formality and function. I run until I can no longer stop on a dime, momentum carries me. I’m laughing, I realize absently, and don’t care about what that means for my sanity, or even what the few neighbors I do have, think of me.

I’m laughing, and when I reach the water, I fall in.