And today?

"Exhausted. Whatever it was that kept - that kept - "

Her breathing shorts and she sits low in the knuckles of her shoulders.
It is hard seeing her without her pride.

She whistles out a breath and a smile flinches in and out of her face. Like a bird trying to settle on soft ground.

"I have been eating my tail. It makes me feel sick."

She make an aborted gestures and scratches hard at the skin above her elbow, under her sleeve.

“Do you remember the metaphors?”

She shifts. The movements are precise in a way that suggests loneliness. She is not used to her time being taken up.

“No.”

“Why not? Weren’t they important to you?”

“Not really. I only built them because the terms they used were so useless.”

“Depression?”

“Mm.” 

I want to ask you who your they are but ...

Perhaps that is the wrong question.

She nods in the rhythm of my thoughts.