Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Beth Oct 2018
I feel like my brain has put an ad block on emotion
And when I try to reach out for you I see a pop up warning me that No! This function cannot be accessed whilst an Ad Block is in use.
So, I try to uninstall and reset the browser but I wake up just the same.
An empty shell of technology, faulty wiring falling into the hands of those without the qualifications to find the on-switch.
A brain both in standby and overworking, an overheating of wired vessels working overtime to provide life to a barely-functional heart.
The quiet murmur of my breathing the only reminder that there is still something behind the blank screen.
You try to keep your patience but I know you want to just throw me to the wall, an excuse to replace my shattered interface with the newest model.
A model that doesn’t feel like it takes them 3 years to get out of bed every morning, a model that doesn’t seem to contract a new virus every day.
Maybe I’m just tired, maybe I’ve run my course, maybe I’ve accidentally encountered malware. Maybe I am the malware.
Or maybe, my brain has put an Ad Block on emotion.
And when I try to reach out for you I see a pop up warning me that No! This function cannot be accessed whilst an Ad Block is in use.
Beth Oct 2018
His hands balanced on the windowsill
stained with the tobacco in his finger tips and
caressed by the fleeting smoke.
He was shaking, and I could do nothing.
No hold that I give him is adequate- for he is not here, neither there.

I long to pull him with me, as he drags at the smoke
but I know there is no use.
He is too far away.
There are raindrops between our bodies but oceans between our minds
and I cannot swim that far.

Every time the smoke leaves his lungs I gasp for it,
every breath he takes fills my lungs with water.
How does he breathe so clearly whilst I am left to drown?
How does his ruination hold more life than the hands I reach to him with?


I yearn for his hesitant touch as he puts out his cigarette
but almost instantly, he is distracted.
I lose him to the hallucinogen of reality.

— The End —