One Person.
Two Eyes.
Three Reasons to cry,
Every reason to lie.
Four hands I see as an ocean of what I bargained with to forget fills my vision.
Five sharp pains tearing at my throat while I clench my teeth together,
the scalpel of a tear running down,
carving an unsightly incision.
Six seconds.
Hold my breath.
Then breathe.
Seven minutes I feel I want to pass away where I stand,
fade from all that are granted sight.
before my phone blinks at me once again with its one blinding eye.
Eight notifications I choose to ignore,
their glow a blinding bright.
Nine voices whispering, “Let yourself go, you’ll be alright.”
Ten quiet promises;
tomorrow will come,
even if I don’t believe it tonight.

I despise time.
I despise having too much of it.
I wait too long and it forces thoughts I’d kept hidden for as long as I could to resurface back to my conscience,
some invisible force that serves to torture my being,
tearing at my core,
as if my chest held a crumbling hour glass.

I despise time.
It goes as quick as it comes,
taking everything I desperately hold onto along with it,
washed away in its corruption.
Family.
Friends.
What I love.
What I keep close to me.
All ripped away in time‘s merciless hands.

I despise time.
Too long in the dark,
staring at walls—
it warps my sight,
summoning that of which I beg to never see again,
yet somehow always comes back.
The faces.
The shadows.
Waltzing around my head in a mocking game,
I lay,
clutching the pulse threatening to burst through my chest.
My stomach hollow and twisting,
my mind unable to divide the real and unreal.
Are the shadows illusions of unnecessary fear?
I can no longer tell.
I look to my left,
and look to my right,
and wake up.
. . .
No I didn’t.
Time seized me in its spiral once again,
smearing colours of confusion and panic across my weak mind—
staining it in thick strokes, never to be peeled off.
The shadows gone,
disintegrated back into each corner of my room,
but the everlasting nausea remains to taunt me.

I despise time.
It creates questions never to have answers.
Why must I become a victim?
No answer.
Why must time steal from my life?
No answer.
Why must it cause my pain,
my grief,
my fear—
yet still bring happiness,
fleeting contentment?
No answer.
Time cannot speak,
questions remain unanswered.
Actions speak louder than words but time makes sure I can’t unravel its intentions,
enjoying observing my suffering,
my anguish,
and my sorrow.
I cannot escape time,
no beginning,
no end.
It traps me in a prison I’ll never escape,
leading anxiety and paranoia into my life instead.
Those are no keys,
my cell will not unlock until time allows it to,
freed by death.

Giving a second chance is like giving someone a second bullet because they couldn’t **** you by the first shot—
I learned that the hard way.
What you once gave became what broke you.
They say salt looks like sugar—
little did I know sayings are made for reasons and wouldn’t exist without them,
some like myself are just unlucky enough to have to taste the salt.
Even once is one too many times.
You never forget the awful sting on your tongue,
the way your throat becomes dry and tense,
all the water you take to try and undo the effects—
yet you still end up sat there with your stinging tongue and dry throat,
regretting your choices like you always do.
Why would you do that?
You should have tested the ‚sugar‘.
Why would you hand over that bullet?
You should have known they’d want to see the blood they never got the chance to look at after their failed shot.
Then they’d say something along the lines of ‚Its okay, because the red means I love you.‘
And you’d forgive.
Again.
Again.
Over,
and over.

Eventually you’ll gain questions as to why you stay.
Out of desperation?
Or out of love?
Guilt?
Paranoia?
But before you make your choice to finally go,
they leave you first.
Despite what intricate plan you had already devised,
knowing you would leave them—
being left first hurt.
More than you ever expected.
So abrupt that the shock shatters you more than the knowing they do not love you,
knowing you’re no longer everything they once said,
alienated from the words you held onto for so long to convince yourself to stay.

Time will pass.
Some days you forget—
some days all you can do is remember.
The feeling isn’t as heartbreaking,
but that doesn’t help the fact that it’s there,
and always will be.

The mirror before me does not lie,
no matter how much I beg it to.
Soft spoken words once given to my appearance have now only faded into shrill and distorted knells in my ears,
screaming things the devil could never utter,
even in a pure fit of rage.

My eyes see myself,
yet my mind can only stare at a horrid, warped creature,
turning whatever dared to reflect such a ghastly image like itself to stone.

Not all scars are seen,
but the mirror plucks them all out into view,
even from the darkest corners of my mind.
It watches.
No pity.
No remorse.
Just a quiet surface of glass which exists only to howl truths long buried within myself,
the kind of noise that echoes in the soul, leaving no space for peace to even think to enter.

Then it shatters.
The sheer weight of my existence making even something as inanimate as a mirror break down at the sight of the mess I call my person.
The tiny fragments look up at me with pure disgust,
a thousand images of myself encircled around me.

The mirror never spoke a word.
It never needed to.
The voice I heard was only my own,
yelling from the depths of my reflection,
weaving a tapestry of shame only I could create.
It did not judge,
nor distort,
nor condemn.
It only represented me thoughts I had cried at myself in silence for years.