There is an emptiness inside of me.
It does not stare back.
It offers nothing,
And it gives nothing.
Deep within me, it festers,
Writhing in unnatural ways,
Shooting infinitely black tendrils
Through every vessel of my brain.
They wrap themselves around
My memories, my emotions,
My friendships and obligations,
Like eating and education,
Then yanks them all into that void,
That vast emptiness,
And leaves me as
A fraction of who I once was.

By: Forrest Jorgensen

Cruising down the road full of snow flurries
She clenched her wheel tightly because she was scared.
Scared that she might not see the moon again.
She was in love with the moon.
Every night she would write in her journal.
She was diagnosed with insanity
But in order for her to continue in society she had to write.
Everyday.
She wanted to prove she could still be okay
Everyday.
To her the snow was trying to keep her away from society.
So this was her fear
Everyday...

As I'm running through my dreams of you.
I see the story on repeat.
A burden lurking in the depths of my soul.
Longing for the life unlived, longing for paradise.
If they were ready.
If you were ready, when I was.

Written on the fingertips like morning dew,
The regrets of the night past.
Furling around the grass beams
Uprooting
The screech.
Moistening the ear canal
With slow dripping spit,
And the sun drags down the noon
Air goes crazy in the skull.
Haunting voices
Waits for the crack.
An escape
Into the sins of the dark night
Waiting
Hunger like.

Her blood lips and pale face was a moon in the night
He held her with gentle whispers of things unsaid between the two
The thick, dead silence of only living words
but death to strike them down with bullets hurting like swords
When they first met
He gave her a pen
She left him with words
He was her first
She was his first
A forbidden love
But she had to let him go
He couldn't take away the pain
She died with the words "You were my first, and only love, I love you"
The paper got lost in the wind.
And so did he.

This burning nightmare never fades,
But with each step I take
A little part is pulled away,
Like a paper sheet being torn into pieces,
And a small part of an image that resides behind that paper is revealed.

Behind the burning paper world,
There is another
Made of beauty and light.
I stop so I can take in this new place
and I look around in wonder,
Oblivious to the remaining pieces of paper
Still burning behind me.

As I close my eyes and breathe in the soft,
Smoke-free air,
The heat grows again and to my uttermost dismay,
I open my eyes to the light filled world being set on fire
By those burning shreds that lay behind me.

The screaming earth shakes my bones
And deafens me with the vibrations of its pitiful death.
Heat courses through my body as the fire reaches me
And pain flourishes over my skin,
The fire that is causing it dancing with deadly beauty beneath me.

As I fall to my knees in agony,
I see the residents of this once beautiful world
Screaming in pain as they burn.
My vision blurs,
I don't know whether from tears or smoke,
And everything goes black.

Shooting up in bed,
I touch my hand to my cheek,
Which is soaked with tears.
With the echoes of their screams still ringing in my ears,
I lay my head back onto my tear stained pillow
And shut my eyes in another futile attempt
To enter a better world.