An occasional wooden jab meant to inspire footsteps.
But I'm numb now and the pain slips between the folds of my thoughts.
(An ephemeral thunder clap in the distance.)
Even the sounds surrounding me become a nearly inaudible murmur from some far off place.
Women weeping, children crying, false promises of hope from men who have lost the light of such ideas from their eyes.
(Thunder, sudden and fleeting.)
The paths we walked as children in better times now so unfamiliar.
Turned to mud by tears and stained with blood.
With waking eyes I see a thousand memories unfold before me in lucidity belying such verisimilitude that for a moment I feign to question the corporeal nature of these apparitions.
(The transient thunder again rings out.)
I involuntarily breathe deep the smells lingering on the crisp air of an autumn morning.
The smell of earth reminiscent of spring in the countryside.
A tenuous fog clings to the air, drifting in silence.
An acrid smell like smoke from a match pulls me from my reverie.
Solemn faces hastily filling a long shallow trench.
My thoughts grow quiet.
Led to the edge and forced to kneel.
Peering into the wretched abyss I see them.
The tortured faces of everyone I'll ever know.
Bodies contorted, sticking up from the dirt like discarded mannequins.
(Thunder.)
It's so quiet now.
Like a candle snuffed out under brass.
It's so quiet

The blade slices so cleanly it's nearly painless.

The flow of red, like a silk ribbon attaching this arm to the bathroom floor.

The heart reacts... A futile attempt.

I give myself to pain to rid myself of the agony I've endured for far too long.

I can't help but think that this red is the most beautiful color I've witnessed in all these years of suffering.

This is my love pouring out.

This is my pain leaving my body.

Some day, I'll see you again... Some day...

If you knew me in the rain drops, through the puddles we walk through, in the streets we grew up in. If you knew the clouds, the gray, the sounds of trees losing their water in an arpeggio of falling drops... You knew me, even if only briefly...

The clear fluid chases away the pain, the darkness, the sadness burning the feelings away with it's fire casting temporary and illusionary light over me, washing my soul in bittersweet emptiness. And in that emptiness, devoid of feeling, a repugnant solace takes me. And for a time my mind relinquishes, silencing my heart which suffers all the more because the heart doesn't forget. The heart takes those feelings the mind disgards and keeps them locked away in a deep place. Slowly cracking under the pressure until it breaks. A mind with no heart is the soul of madness.