approaching the intersection, I saw an old, wandering dog, stoop low in the snow, shaking. three weeks later, her owner was found, hanging. I didn’t care much for that old man. I don’t care much, anymore, for anything. but the note he left is one I can’t stop reading. “I’m just so scared of never knowing.” and now I know I’m not alone in feeling how fear won’t let the mind stop stirring. everything is stirring.

not in the words, but in the shaking of his handwriting. heart too heavy for a mind no longer worth fighting. scribbled text of thought, arrested in this ghost grieving; left life behind to bear the weight of all his love leaving. questions within letters, written while he choked back tears. how graves reframe the ways we suffocate from all those fears. silence stains the cursive imprints on the darkened mind. I wish there was no way out, but escape is all I ever find. winding, word-for-word, through cloud turns, on this worst of nights. ‘après nous lé deluge,’ guiding you into blinding light. and come to find only the cold this calling place creates. for time can not replace what time itself let fade away. while rearranging ways of being always here and always there, with nothing but all of these haunting, watching, empty stares. I may not rest now, maybe ever, there are monsters near. as the ink bleeds, smears, and blurs, your name across the page, this painted portrait of a man comes clear with all his pain. scattered, tattered, drafts, stacked to the glass, shrouds rooms in black. and fills context with the kind of quiet that can listen back. all these retracts as the pen split, cracked, and spilled, its secrets like the noose around his neck sat, wrapped in solemn words of regrets. set to each mis-step, when reaching through when far past fatal depth. scenes lead from floors, to ceilings, then from screams, to final breath. off to the other side, or so the story goes. where words stand still as golden statues, frozen in this winter snow. while eyes now always newly hollow, somehow, follow, fade, and glow, from photos of those ghosts kept close, exposed, as also holding shadows. notes composed of sorrows grown in gardens of the great unknown begin to fill and overflow, like rivers mapped on withered souls that never show that somewhere of which winds emerge, or where they blow. but places not yet known can feel like home with nowhere else to go. quietly recalling calm in currents all the words brought on. before distance kept within this cursive, closes. before this storm formed that now steadily approaches. clouds drip with the drowning black of ink, while winds grip skin with vicious teeth. restless depths I can't accept that I have seen. will you ever know what those words you wrote will mean? everything, now stirring. everything, once sleeping. everything haunting my mind; alive in every word I write. nights, endless as open oceans. skies, empty as words unspoken. time, clearly and yet unbroken. eyes staring, unknowing. blank.

pages only seem to hinder white noise from a distance. piece by broken piece, the sunset sinks behind horizons. cages marked with claws show memories of failed persistence. hurt is not a cure, but somehow stands to still the numbness. sever every limb, with no thought of their place or purpose. nothing changes time, but rust can slow the apparatus. blackening our lungs when breathing barely makes a difference. widening our scars when no one is around to notice. this is the only ancient story worth leaving etched in stone. some things will not erase and now, that includes you. you said my fear is state of mind but it was all you left behind. so, what was I supposed to find, without you here to be my guide? did you hear me in those lines? or, stare at all the stars and skies on the postcards I would write, and leave outside your door each night? now, the words you never meant will be the arrows through your heart. I know you heard me speaking to you. I hope you make it through. I know you heard me speaking to you. I hope you make it through when you call on me, like I called on you.

river, run. in, and out. unspeakable, and thrown about. like seeds on verdure, fertile, ground, where vines we grow are to which we’re bound. silent now, and safe. away from any distant sound. quiet, stolen, lonely, place, where we decide when we are found. leaves of trees swing restlessly, reminding me they need to free. like branches sing with rustling, we scream out all our suffering. heavy wings of half-beliefs we founded in uncertainty can span the length of tragedy we pray remains as the unseen. dimming suddenly, along the dark clouds they’re encircling. these silver linings may just be the only light worth following. and as swiftly as the river bends, scenes of grief flow those ravines behind my eyes, still wandering the peace of unheard melodies I seem to swim while in my dreams. with lids like new technology, left rusting over centuries of wind and rain, persistently ravaging once-great machines. leading to my carefully dissecting spectrum prisms, splitting. vision fixing desperately on any light, left brightly burning. you should have seen me swing, atop the seventh-story balcony. with breezes that blew carelessly, while I waited to fall freely. gripping tight the railing in my fits of vivid ecstasy. laughing at my thinking any disbelief could change a thing. are you between where I am and can not see? like the ocean, where it drifts out of our hands and names scribbled in the sands. or, are you the calming breeze? above where currents call to me of beds at only oceans deep, where I will one day get some sleep. fixate on the way the waves collapse, ebb, then evaporate. let each breath take in new space and touch the stars that we could paint. watch the rain on window panes collide and slowly dissipate. our sun has never gone away, just left to light another place. are you between where I am and can not see? like the ocean, where it drifts out of our hands and names scribbled in the sands. or, are you the calming breeze? above where currents call to me of peace at only oceans deep, where I will one day get to breathe. my mind has opened like the sea, with depths so dark it needs belief. so scared of drifting aimlessly, in scenes that spark insanity. thought, now, like the forestry, has overgrown its weathering, with no good shade beneath these trees that wither in the desert heat. I kept the twigs between my teeth to speak of where we’ll always be. I pleaded with the pleiades to place the stars among my feet, for nights too closely following my new sense of stability; consuming endless memory of causes to my agony. every scream of grief is now illuminating, beautifully, this canvas filled with questioning enough to sink the seven seas. but captivating colors in this scene begin disintegrating, at the speed and frequency with which dreams keep unraveling. sweeter, is the unheard melody of silent melancholy, resonating from the throats of birds willing to brave singing off-key, into storming winds of desperate, frantic, whispering, now flooding every sense and sound held dearly. although solemnly. so, staring to the symphony, with arms lifted, listening, I speak with no one answering, “can you hear me disappearing?”

I have spent ten thousand days out at sea. nothing to keep me company, except the memories. eyes staring constantly, from birds now encircling. waiting for the day when waves will rise up to swallow me. lighthouse beacon, never bright and never beckoning. if they sent a search party, they only sent for my body. watching my life end like watching old movie scenes. still, only counting these blips between switching screens. all these burn marks in my day dreams match the ink stains I’m creating.

get cut while picking through pieces of broken glass. biting your tongue for the blood to create a mask. your image glows as you smoke under neon signs. ripples in sight of a world painted black and white. cocaine on top of the flipped-over ashtray. ketamine helps take the edge off that migraine. make-up won’t cover the color of butane marks. yes, that’s a trophy scar I tore across my left arm.

now, I rip these words straight from the throat of that very same horror at the bottom of the wellspring that screams my name. sadists. fucking vultures. squawking loudly, as they tear the skin from bodies overflowing in this wilderness of human rotting. dead leaves sway from trees decaying in the pools of ethanol congealing at the roots, as gasoline for bodies burning. technicolor tunnel-vision. power lines of frantic static. parasites feed from incisions. sounds of howls in horrid havoc. every scream, a dead connection. breath fills lungs with putrid toxins. bloodlust choir sings harmonic, at my solemn bid and wish. for here, on this page, I am god. there is no heaven above me. I can make real every fear. you will drown in dark water at my feet. life, like the sun, burning out. death himself, will be shown no mercy. I will create as I speak. and destroy all of that which destroyed me. I used to hear you say that I could speak for angels. (ego te audire quod loqui potui est angeli.) but now, I am the voice of the devil. (nunc autem ego sum vox diaboli.) grab hold of your chemicals (rip out your teeth/) and swallow by the handful. (one-by-one. just for fun. try it.) hunger made a thousand-fold (tear out your eyes.) and thirst, unquenchable. (no more light left to find, shining.) welcome to the carnival (call all your dogs/) of every wretched impulse. (to leave marks. open scars, bleeding.) escape is unattainable (dig for your heart/) and you will meet death, miserable. (through the bone. all alone, dying.) all your broken hearts will end uncertain as they cease and drip like curtains onto our gold-leaf stage. where we strip each painting of your name and you can unlock the gates, or we can chew through the chains. now, I appear in this delirium. all your fucking superstitions mirrored in this truth serum, will be ripped clean with bleeding teeth and apathy on angel wings. along the city streets, while waiting for your death to make you happy. flicking cigarettes for vanity, but we smoke from amphetamines. I want to be as pretty as the people on your social feed. decadence and luxury. caviar and flattery. sleeping in the stench of bloating bodies before decomposing. getting cozy with the mistresses and misfits, eating shit the preachers spit to let the profits fill their pockets. plotting kidnappings and homicides with pills cut in pesticides. what hides behind my sullen eyes is sadist ways I fantasize of animals we euthanize swinging above beds at night. before being dragged by your crying eyes, filled with fright and frostbite, through the moonlight. you know I wanted you alive, right? if you die, I will never get to lick the tears you cry. skinned this black cat on my shoulder. felt the reaper shiver when he heard I bent his daughter over; taught her slaughter gets the best of me, like performing a back-alley, dahlia, lobotomy. if I had to keep my sanity, you can leave me here to rot in peace. so put the rusting hacksaw to your wrist, if you want to see somebody bleed. or, is apathy the club trash that you gathered dumpster diving your own pity party? you're just scared to die without a cause. since you picked one and lost. but life and death come for what is spent, no matter what the cost. pause.

quiet. listen. all will be well. are you listening? all will be well. quiet. listening. everything is stirring. always. all manner of things shall be well. listen.

on the eve of the day that I’ll die, I might smile to say I was never alive. too much time spent in stillness, with silence the tragic and fragmented mind leaves behind. from violent and hostile aggression I hide, to my searching skies until I was struck blind. I wake up to paper cuts all through the night, writing lines while awaiting my suicide. if you will, please excuse me this moment. my throat chokes when opened from presuppositions; those visions of permanence, now seen as absence, when viewed through too much recollection. for perspective distorts all the more as it forms, from your touching their warmth to their outward reflection. and storms what was once safer shores, found before your remorse turned your course with its questions. so, how would you choose to move through truths I had to, when I asked your reaction and you never knew? what if I told you my newly bloomed roots only grew once I chewed through limbs I still use? could you stomach the tourniquet, blood-let the sickness, if it meant your neck was removed? what if the only way you felt you made change was with damage that you can't undo? see, these growing psychoses, now slowly approaching, erode what I'm speaking as they start encircling. dressing my wounds in the rust of insanity. breathing the worst into stuttering memories. to my mother and sister, I'm sorry it just never seems to stop raining. and father, I'm sorry the flame lately ain't burning so brightly. my mind keeps collapsing from crafting these form-fit apologies needed for altered realities, constantly bending and breaking, while feeding belief that grief is the only song worth my singing. good god, please, just bring me peace for one night. for I tried to keep quiet these voices inside, but each scream has now grown too loud for my frail frame to fight. fix this eclipse to my winged words and visions, so vivid I feel like I lived them. but life that exists behind eyelids divides all defined as 'psychosis' in reference to outside experience. so, this light that they say emanates from my face is from fangs flashing white as their jaws gnash restraints. framed in a way that bids the voice break when this shaking shows pain can't stay caged on the page. "what a shame. what a shame," you say. as I explain how I think this makes three days awake. my mistake, I'm afraid. I feel safer in chains. while you count up your blessings, I'm counting down days. but gold fangs replaced what remained of my faith. save misshapen silhouettes, withered like picture frames. born, wading in waves that this downpour creates. down the well with my name and remains of what hate took away. sir, I pray you, forgive my delay. I just find it futile to hope I stay sane, while watching each day from behind window panes. waving goodbye to what I never gave. in exchange for chasing what may be contained in the blanks, what the stranger that I became imitates, and what it would take to make the rest of my life seem less like a waste of time and space. overexposed in those moments alone, like rose beds below this frozen, november snow, is knowing what I was shown has been hidden by dull, cold, consuming, soft white, light glow. with no home to speak of, return to, or go, my hope floats on leaves blown from trees grown above where I decompose, making sure of the daydreams and ghosts I want carved in my gravestone. shiver. twitch. scream. rewind. exhausting the skyline with cries for my life. no more light. or, will left to fight. give up. I should end everything, tonight. "please, breathe. keep calm and be strong. remember why you fought so hard for god knows how long. find peace. release and move on. remember who all will be hurt if you're gone." nervous tic. manic switch. collapse of the synapse. fix for the relapse. I'm not coming back. frantic, shattered glass, heart attack. gasping too fast to let static fill rips in the fabric. "patience. this wait will prove worth what was taken. place faith in the hands of the hope you've created. I wish I could take away from the hurt and the hatred to save you from the weight of the pain and the anguish." but please, I insist on you being a witness to that which consumes but consists of no substance. they say grace takes the place of emptiness, but lately it seems like a new name for silence. black stained, mechanistic, unimpeded, mission. tragic syntax trapped between triptych vision. each breath, this mistress will one day take back as her credit. I beg your pardon, miss, for apologetics. apoplectic, poetic, paralysis. signal distress through pragmatic analysis. which, when projected, makes prismatic panic seem, at best, somewhat apocalyptic. convinced, for a moment, that this is my last chance to sound my own movement and speak with a purpose. regardless of how this curse burns through the senses, I always feel strongest as it floods my fingertips. from half a lifetime spent with my jaw clenched, suspended by this eclipse. now, I write this to you from that vast, distant, emptiness. of which, is soon to be the only immeasurable constant. time may be fleeting but death is persistent. what you hear when I speak beautifully is my demons ascending and screaming in agony, from the depths of that well where they were supposed to be buried, indefinitely. but they cling, grip, rip, tear, and keep climbing, slowly. and surely if you were to see their wings spanned across their faces of nothing, they would empty you, like they emptied me. I must ask you to, please, not interrupt. far too much disruption has caused enough corrosion in an already failing system, eroding beneath this building burning from faulty wiring and manufacturing flaws. how the hell am I supposed to fight back with clipped claws? like a cold wind to bone. every shiver un-shown, became all that I know. and I fear, as it grows, it will hollow out any parts of my heart that it doesn't yet own. I don't know of anything here left to hold. I just don't think I will get through my grieving, all alone. all the same, every day, only rain and this pain. knowing everyone, and all things I love, will be taken away, while I'm standing there, staring, with nothing to say. because I've already been screaming since awake that day. (and not one fucking thing has ever fucking changed.) on the eve of the day that I die, I will smile to say I was never alive. (the day that I die, I will smile/) too much time spent in stillness, (thinking of tragic words I could write/) with silence, thinking of tragic and fragmented words I could write (to explain to you all, why/) to explain to you all why (there is nothing/) I can't look you in the eyes. there is nothing (left behind.) but death in mine and the emptiness left behind. (I was never alive.)

I am (nothing/) sorry (coming.) I was (nothing/) not listening. (going.)

I hold my hope and prayer at the bottom of a rusted root tapestry. chains strung up to the ceiling, for when I finally kick the chair and start feeling. I wish that I could wake up to death. to live one day in the way that I felt and said, for just one time. for just one time. just one time. is that all it takes for you to bide your lines long enough to watch me bend the girders, smash the frame, get cut on the windows, and bury my own name? this entrenched guilt makes me feel like a ghost. like a ghost, mostly making a shadow for you to step through. lately, been leaking through the creaking of the floor to show side effects and future scars of battles still in store for all of you. all of you. maybe it's a scene that I am only being silent through. director, not directing. letting life be led by line and cue. the orchestra. the violin. the chandelier. the empty pen. the orchestra. the violin. the chandelier. the empty pen. marquee, moving gradually. but, where did my name go? where did the lights go? where do the lights go? where am I supposed to go? I have nowhere to go.

as the willow sways and bends to weep and grieve its every dying end and newly fallen leaves, it strains its tearing, wearied eyes for every budding seed it leaves behind, in hopes that one will find it hides, inside, another forestry. time for me to bleed, and breathe, and speak, my piece, more openly. to keep my memory from repeating sounds of windows shattering, among my mother's screams for me to leave my sleep for disbelief and grieve until the day the reaper also comes for me. where the bereaved are so used to uncertainty in scene setting that changing stories into eulogies feels like drifting endlessly, anchor-less, under painted skies, across painted seas, while artificial beams of light accompany the sundowning. can you hear the way this shakes my ribcage, oh so violently? faint and fading "goodbye”, now the sweetest unheard melody. sung by starlit skies in symphonies of light, now disappearing. and I would gladly die than live another day with mine taken away from me. I have felt the end of you and I. and all the weight of words, now left behind, have torn apart my heart and mind. but if I try, at least fucking try, to write it right, I can hope to one day, one day, find some peace inside. so keep your cautious calm, I'll struggle all day long as I reach in my head to rip out what is dead. if I bleed out instead, at least you'll have a song to hear each word I said. and know I truly meant to find out what is wrong, to find out what I kept, to find out if I'm strong, to find out what is left, to find out why I'm terrified my life might, again, be taken while I slept. yet another night of staring at the skies from riverbeds. yet another night of writing down the words I should have said. yet another night of all those screams and cries still in my head. yet another night of knowing, one day, they will find me dead. promise me you're hoping. promise me a compass. promise me you're searching. promise me it's painless. promise me it's worth it. promise me it's perfect. promise me you heard this. promise me this will end with roses. when I drop to the ground, will anyone be around? when I drop to the ground, will my body be found? when I drop to the ground, will I ever be found? when I drop to the ground, I swear that I will make a sound. when I drop to the ground, I swear that I will make a sound. I swear that I will make a sound. I will make a sound.

and so now, it may very well be your own breath that resurrects them.