hollowed out
a vast ravine
my vessel is vacant
with rooms for lease

empty
my soul is weary and tired
blackened
crumbling to ashes in its cage
a crater
poignant with despair
while beasts with crimson claws
eat their way inside

like the shadow-lands
my body carries carasses
of past evolutions,
and my previous sanguine mask
made of paper mache
falls
apart
as icy winds strike,
raking sharp fingernails across
my skin,
marking it read, black, and blue.

rooms for rent until july,
until life has ended,
until the black becomes a champ,
capturing the beating of my heart
and stilling my insides.

there were days of gold -
just yesterday, i swear -
but they are as coy as spring,
always replaced by the inevitable,
irrevocable plague
of the vicious winds and icy breath
of monsters
rising from hibernation,
taking their rightful place
and murdering the light
starting to reappear in my eyes.

there are beasts inside me
with yellowed claws
and gaping, black pits
for mouths
who grin with sickly teeth
that are dripping
with the blood of
my past selves.

selves that they have carved
into shreds and chunks
until all that was left were black stumps,
ashes, and fragile bones
left to rot,
to poison the remaining
pure
pieces that remain.

and in the dark
i can feel them.

i can taste
the venom
pulsing through my translucent veins
as it slides through my system
effortlessly blighting my mind,
soul, and body
with twisted, dark thoughts
with loathing, weariness,
and with concepts that are rooted in truth.

they remind me that i have no place here,
that i do not deserve to waste
the precious oxygen
required to keep me alive,
nor am i worth contributing to
the depletion of natural resources
that will someday
run out.

a voice that once whispered seductively
from the outskirts of my dark,
tortured brain,
and trained me on ways to rip myself from life
with only a bottle of pills
or a blade,
now screams at me.

costantly reminding me that i am not good
enough
or that there is
nowhere
for me;
no matter how far i run,
my ghosts will follow.

as these ghosts are not the people
or this town
or even corpses that rot,
confined underground.

my ghosts are all the same,
and they are all
me.

i am the demon,
the murderer,
the ruination of my past,
my present
and, eventually,
my future.

i am the monster in the closet
beating against the doors
and pleading to be set free.
i am the behemoth who is suffocating,
forced to breathe in my own virulent air
and i am the demon
that i have battled,
the demon i have conquered
over and over again
if only for the time being.

the black war that
rages
inside of my mind
is the monster's fault
and by extension,
this battle -
all of these battles -
can only be solved by myself
and perhaps,
if i were a hero
i could win.

but i am just a mortal,
straining under the weight
of one fraction of
the world
and no mere mortal
has ever been
their own hero;
no mere mortal
will ever win
against
their shadow twin.

don't leave,
and don't you dare
say goodbye.

i am not crying
because you will be gone -
or, i'm trying to pretend
that that isn't the case.

i am crying
because you're like my safety blanket,
and my inspiration,
and you were once my best friend
i am crying
because i need you,
even if you don't need me.

i need things to stay the same,
and you disappearing,
moving to bigger cities
and starting a new life
is not the same.

i want to hear your laugh,
obnoxiously loud over things
that are never quite as funny
as your reaction
i need to know that you are somewhere,
close by,
thinking and living and breathing
the same way i am
and i need to know
that when the moon shines its beams
across us at night,
and i am looking at the stars,
that perhaps we are thinking the same thought
just in different visions;
relative, like the way
every person
perceives things differently.

i do not want to
forget
you, or anything you've made me feel
although i do know it's time to
move on.
but i must admit,
when i am in class,
and your name somehow stumbles its way
to the front of my brain,
it will hurt that much more -
like a sudden shock
caused by an imbalance of electrical charges.

i do not want you to leave,
and thinking about it now hurts too much.
i guess i knew,
always,
that this was coming
but i never realized it would come
quite so suddenly,
or quite so soon.

my blood's running through my veins
ice cold, so slow
my mind's stumbling over memories
from a lifetime ago.
my eyes don't shed tears,
but somehow they cry,
as i listen to the sound
of a broken heart die.
you listen to the lies,
i listen to the feelings,
bleeding through the words
that float to the cloudy ceiling.
watch the angel's wings,
last breath in her eyes,
wings spreading wide
as she chokes out her goodbyes.

a heart full of love,
couldn't see the dedication.
you loved her like she was
a prescribed medication.
when you saw the light, and
made a fresh new start
you threw away the pills,
stabbed a dagger in her heart.
so when the love ran red and
the truth came out,
you held her hand, just once,
as the rain poured down.
in her last living moments
you swear to keep her safe,
but in the end, God's hands
tore her from this wretched place.

tonight, as you danced
on a platform of heroes,
surrounded by a blur
of faces you have never seen,
i was ****** back
in time.

as dresses swirled,
visions of a distant time
assaulted me. i could
envision
you and i
swirling the way the actors did -
the way you did -
in a ballroom
with souls fitted into
ballgowns and formal suits.

i could almost hear
you laughter
burst above the
orchestra, and
the buzz of excitement
zipping through the air.
i felt your hand
against mine;
one gripped my waist,
scorching my skin
and marking it with uncharted masses
of land.

as you lead; i follow
you twirl us around,
until we float
far above the crowd,
the clouds, straight
into the stars
when suddenly -
a flash! a spark! -
and i am back.

alone in my seat, and
stuck in a different world.
no longer twirling,
towards the land of the Gods,
but spiraling back
to unwelcome
reality.

in life,
where do you dream to go?
is it nashville,
new york city,
or maybe tokyo?

where will your heart
lead you towards?
out of my life,
through wide open doors?

how long before
i see you again?
wednesday,
next year
towards the end?

will you remember me
in ten years, twenty?
when there are crinkles
by your eyes,
or when there's gray hair aplenty?

one thing is for sure,
i could never forget you.
not tomorow,
not ever,
not even when i'm eighty-two.

but if you forget me,
i won't hold a grudge;
because life is too short
for you to trudge
through old, forgotten faces
and memories long buried,
or to revisit old races
that you've already won.

i don't ask you to remember
my visage, my dreams,
let alone my name.
just please remember
my voice, and dancing
in the rain.