Mania: Gift of the Gods

By Julia Voyt

Pages and pages of 12 size Times New Roman are bled across the paper feverishly, introductions and statistics under methods and conclusions. Not eating food and my bicep is smaller this week I talk faster to my family and I write, write, write. The earth outside smells different and sweeter. I am anew and I am beautiful. When I speak others laugh and radiate warmth they want my number they want to know me. The world and ground and sky has a technicolor filter and the words flow fast, pure and sweet and sensical. From the swell of my chest and the curve of my hips my skin is clear and thick how did I ever feel inferior. I am akin to the old marble sculptures of the Greeks. It’s too warm now the fire is growing and my head has this sharpening pain and people can’t understand when I talk to them, all “slow down, slow down.” Ivory stretched snugly over bone and devoured muscle, my frame hatching into something smaller, unadulterated. In a ball on the floor screaming because someone put my naked brain under torrential rain and left it there. The writing is no longer coherent but it flows out swiftly swiftly swiftly ramblings and delirium I haven’t eaten in a week I am not hungry, Mom, and oh! my hair has become brittle the circles under my eyes are growing why am I always shaking but I can only lie in bed awake through the night listening to music for comfort as Hypnos and Morpheus scorn my poor body and for the first time in days a far, sane, quiet part of me is deeply afraid.