Seven years old
I’m playing outside
A girl I’ve been next door to for two years
Wears a cape like mine
Red
Red like the blood that screams
As it desperately tries to force its way to my brain
A metal slide I used to have
Holds my cape prisoner
Struggling dreams of if it would look like I was flying
If only it flew up and caught the wind
Instead of sink down and grasp my neck
Her mouth is open
Tears in her eyes
I can’t hear her screams
Over the helpless gasping of mine
As vision begins to fade a silver flash escapes the backdoor
My grandma darts down the stairs
Eyelids descend like time in an hourglass
My body rises to the heavens
I think this is it

            
                
                           “Grandma?”

Trees in the yard grow alongside me.
I’ve scaled their trunks
And swung from their branches.
Fallen through their leaves,
Scraping my arms and knees on the way down.

I grow a little older,
The trees a little taller.
One oak is getting too big,
It grows in the driveway
And needs to be cut down.
One less tree.

Another gets removed to make way for a pool.
The tree lasted for decades before my parents moved there,
The pool lasted a summer.
A summer of splashing in constantly cold water.
A circular pool acting as police tape for this ****** scene.
One less tree.

One in the front yard
Poses a threat to the house’s foundation.
Its trunk is cut down,
And it’s stump ripped out of the ground.
I grew up when I ran out of branches to climb.
One less tree.

The last tree gets struck by lightning.
It falls over and hits the garage.
It’s body seared, and it’s sap oozes like blood
A wood chipper comes and disposes of it’s remains.
A dead patch of grass, like a chalk outline of its corpse.
One less tree.

Two trees remain.
One is used to hold the dog’s leash while she roams outside.
The other provides shelter
For the squirrels and birds who were evicted.
I wonder,
Which one will go next?

I wake up whenever the big bright thing comes back, you call it a sun but I don’t know that fact.  I don’t have a specific schedule, my mud hut is pretty basic but arguably influential.  I don’t start my mornings with green eggs and ham, a freshly caught rabbit shall be breakfast for the fam.  

Most of my day consists of finding food, whatever’s around, no particular mood.  Everything I’ve learned I teach to my child, this uncivilized world can get pretty wild.  After playing with junior I look for more food, I see a fellow ‘magnon “What’s up, my dude?”  We forage for nuts and we forage for berries, leaves will do, but, you know, it varies.  

When the cold goes away we’ll begin to farm, we’ll change the land what’s the harm?  It’s almost dinner what could I make?  There’s a lot of fish down in that lake.  I crouch near the water and aim my harpoon, I sense a tasty supper sometime soon.  Compared to the average human my senses are keen, lucky for you It’s 2016.  

I’m stuck in the food chain, you shouldn’t complain.  I had to outrun a bear today, I ran uphill and shouted, “HOORAY!”  The hill had a spider, it couldn’t be wider.  It bites my ankle, making me rankled.  I’m growing pretty tired, possibly due to the bite I acquired.  

My head gets heavy and my thoughts start to fade, I try to focus on the idea I last made.  I look at the tiny dots in the night, contemplating my place and where I fit right.  My species so young, our world so mysterious, what you have yet to learn should make you delirious.  

I curl up on the floor and close my eyes, the story of my life forever fossilized.  My tribe members bury me but I’m not the first, an underground sea of dead bodies is all that remains in the land we traversed.

“The problem with sanity is that I CAN’T lose my mind, it’s inescapable.”  
Sanity is a spiral.  An ever-tightening coil, that goes around and around.  

One may find themselves at the beginning, their head perfectly clear.  
But as time goes by, moments of absurdity start to appear, like mosquitos at the start of Spring.  It feeds off you.  Picks at you, like a scab ready to burst.  

Until you finally reach the center and the spiral is so tight it crushes your psyche.  
But the thing about spirals is that they never end, there’s always more.  

You may never fully break,
But you can always turn around and find the beginning once more.  
And just remember,
“Your now is not your forever”
Even if the spiral may feel that way.

Emptiness is not depressing.
In fact, It is the complete loss of everything.
Emptiness doesn’t even feel numb,

You sit in the same clothes you had on three days ago,
Underwear and all
And watch reruns of That 70s Show.
Hoping it may bring forth some slight semblance of nostalgic joy.
A youthful remembrance of what feelings were,
When you still had them.

But you pour another white russian
And stare at the screen until the only thing left that isn’t empty

Is your eyes from the light.