april promised to be warm. warm enough to leave the house in a light coat or a worn-out hoodie without fear of getting sick. and yet, the cold pierced through. its source was hidden somewhere behind the ribs, which the blanket didn't clear. this one coiled like a serpent around the lungs and made the teeth chatter even in a sunlit room. it made hands tremble without reason. i could feel it spreading – a slow, enveloping wave – from the marrow to the skin, until the skin itself felt like someone else’s. it didn’t pay rent for settling; exhausting shit, slowly driving me insane.

and i cut. just a line here and there, a small permission to feel something other than that bone-deep frost, an escape, a hand tethering to something real. the blood was warm for a second, then it cooled too. the trembling never stopped.

i’ve always been good at running. i sprinted until my lungs burned, until my vision blurred, until the world started tilting from lack of oxygen, and i reached the aim. there is no goal anymore – just away, just to be faster than my head. i tried to sleep. wrapped in blankets – two, three, a whole nest of them – but the cold was already inside the core. it didn’t care about wool or cotton. it didn’t care about messages that should have been replied to a week ago. later. always later.

i’ve always been good at talking. i rambled until my throat hurt, until my mouth couldn’t catch up with my mind that created words before my tongue said them. once appearing in public, i suddenly forgot how to talk. words felt too heavy, too sharp, my brain refusing to make sentences. and after that, i forgot how to be anything but bark and bite. the snarl comes easy. when someone knocks, when a voice asks, suddenly concerned, the teeth show before the thought does. i bite the hands that reach. i snap at the light. because the cold has taught me that help is just another kind of wound, and that kindness is only a prelude to leaving.

so i lie there, shivering from the ribs outward, wrapped in everything i own, and nothing owns me back.