I'm compartmentalizing my thoughts and delivering them to you on my tongue. Gift wrapped in a silver metallic paper, with a tiny pink bow on top that bounces jubilantly with every step I take. Waiting to be opened and heard, the gift sits on my tongue.

Sometimes no ears are lent so I swallow the thought and redigest it.  It falls into the black and finds itself trapped back in my head. It ricochets from wall to wall, eager to be released.

          One day I found out no one wants to listen.

So I bottle it all up, and the thoughts start getting crowded. I become scatter brained, my head hectic with inmates, jailed without a crime. They riot, burning me out each time. My head sizzles like road **** in the heavy heat.

                         It's time for a jailbreak!

I pick up a pen and release the inmates into my veins. They pump through me and fill me with life, violently pounding their way through my fatal heart. Once I channel their energy, they flow out my fingers, into the ink and onto the paper.

          They bleed as they're released, finally free,
singing the song of a man compartmentalizing his thoughts.

He who rides his horse
through the mountains of love
while spitting down on those
in the valley of seething hate
should be struck from his horse,
and cast down among them,
for he is no different.

Which should I eat,
salt or sulfur?
Both can **** me,
but one more quickly.
Life is precious,
but death befits thee.

If time is a trial,
then death acquits me.
So which will it be?
Salt or sulfur?

Fallen leaves scamper at my feet,
like a scourge of plagued rats.
Unlike the rats, they are welcome at my feet,
but much like the rats, they mean only death.
For they are the harbingers of a great fire that will sweep our lands,
red, orange, and yellow,
and will signal the turning of the seasons,
the coming of ice and frigid gales,
the feeling of death,
which will ravage my heart.

And in that moment, I was her.
It was like her conscious, her perception began expanding,
and ballooned, consuming everyone in the room,
as she sifted through the sepia toned pictures.
Suddenly time slowed and the waves outside got louder,
it drowned out all other noises except her voice,
hesitant to recall yet eager to reminisce,
as recollections of her past flashed before her eyes,
out of her mouth, and into my head,
where I could see them,
sepia toned, vivid, just like the pictures.

When I was absorbed I was hit by two tones,
one being the tone of sepia,
which soaked the memories splashed before me,
and the other being the tone of joyous death.
The sepia was the color of the pictures and the tone of the mood,
while joyous death was the joy we found in reminiscing the dead.

The waves washed away the memories when her voice ceased,
I returned to Earth as they exhaled their last trembling breath.

It's September 20th, 2017 and I'm driving down a rain soaked I-93 South on a cool Tuesday night, or maybe even a Wednesday morning. There's a concrete barricade to my right with tiny fluorescent reflectors every 4 feet to indicate I cannot turn right unless I want to die. I want to die but I'm obeying the tiny fluorescent reflectors. The road is coated with a still sheet of rain and looks like a long black cracking mirror laid out before me. The tiny fluorescent reflectors reflect off the mirrored road and dive deep into its jet black depth. They drag themselves deep down into the jet black road. They drag me down with them on September 20th, 2017. Deeper and deeper they drag me down.

I keep having dreams
that I'm swimming,
across vast murky pools
of my mud and blood and mystery,
swimming to hope
which I can see in the distance,
up in flames.
Worst part is,
I can't swim.