The tattered rope
thrills my skin,
puling tighter around
my stiff flesh,
made harder by
my simple repetition.
Each new day,
I take this
and tie it
around my neck,
letting it rest,
letting me feel
every single sensation
that permeates me.
Each new day,
I grow colder,
widening the distance
between my horrors
and everyone else.
But this day,
my fingers slipped,
the rope tightened,
my legs slackened,
and I stopped.
Practice, my practice,
gone to waste
as I hang
by my pride.
It’s amazing how fast the clock ticks time away
when no one’s watching,
how time slowly ebbs
from wandering eyes
and becomes a distant memory.
We can look back,
reconstruct them as best we can,
adn relive tender moments,
brittle events,
nostalgic times.
Those memories don’t stay for long though
and we’re pushed back to the present,
the time where we try most to escape from.
For a little longer,
could you linger there,
casting ethereal shadows over
the one that misses you most?
My mother,
strong as she pretends,
weeps for you,
grandmother.
She hasn’t broken yet
but the tears well in her eyes
when your name comes up
and her shoulders begin to shake
every time she sees your picture.
Please,
I don’t believe
but she does.
Please,
linger a little longer
for her.
We were guided into the room,
each step more painful than the last,
our eyes cast down
lest they catch the bright sun.
We filed around,
a meter between us and her.
No tears,
no tears,
all swallowed away
and dragged beneath
so that none may see.
We hide from each other,
speaking in soft words
so as not to disturb the sleeping woman
that will never wake.
We each spoke our words about her,
away from her,
hesitantly pacing in the same spot.
She was her but not…
with closed eyes that were glossed over,
hair that stood unnaturally against gravity,
cheeks that had color when they were long pale,
wrinkles lightly brushed away.
She was foreign but she was her,
the reason we were there
and each one of us,
with the entirety of ourselves,
wished we had not gathered,
wished that she was still her and not there
that we may forgo a meeting
in such a squalid atmosphere.
She brought a family together by creating it
through tracts and and branches
in a familiar tree
and with her sleep,
the branches began to crack
around her casket,
lining it with the embers that consumed her
only to be put out with soft tears.
She was her
but she was gone.
Sometimes the pain wins
over parts of your mind
that never felt before
and your thinking becomes crippled
to the point that you want to forget,
to lose all the memories of sorrow.
It gets to a point where you’re not sad
because you’re sad
but because you can’t be happy.
The memories,
constant reminders of weakness,
ebb at your sanity,
slowing dragging you back to the past
where you die
and have no future.
Sometimes
it’s best to forget.
No human sound,
just the echoes of the house,
throwing noises against the walls,
cascading down my hall.
Every little eye,
though,
that belongs in a sentient beast
in this house
has closed
and silenced their hosts
so that I may remain awake
and bask in nothing.
At first they were bruises,
turning pale skin crimson with pain,
then the wounds deepened.
They became scratches
that tunneled still
until they festered
and boiled with insecurity.
Blood pooled gently around the deep cuts,
then rushed out in foaming geysers.
I tried to hold together the flesh
but the ammunition kept coming
from guns fueled by words
and disgraceful actions
handled by beings once my friends.
This onslaught continued on,
begging my flesh to falter,
my mind to break,
until I became the sick nothing
that the weapon-bearers were.
So…
I gave in.
If the world were to quiet,
lose all its sound,
either beautiful or ugly,
I’d want the last thing I hear
to be your voice.
Everything’s closer now,
moving in for the kill.
It takes its time,
building up the thrill,
but eventually,
as with all of nature,
it brings about
some fatal danger.
These walls,
pristine and white,
creep closer now,
to the edge of my sight.
Closer and closer,
threatening my survival,
they creep and
dash any hopes of reprisal.
Against my skin they press,
their hardness against my soft flesh,
and they come quietly now,
making me their kill fresh.
Down I go as things go to black
and I drown on blood as the walls slowly move back.
Each human strives,
hard as they can,
just to be remembered,
just so,
at the end of each day,
someone,
somewhere,
knows their name
and their deeds.
It’s that effort
that makes us truly immortal.
