There's a certain kind of silence here.
The profound and total only-in-the-country type of silence that city folk fear.
(The kind that my poor mother back home staves off with television and beer.)

So heavy and complete that even with your head under the sheets it's impossible to keep warm enough to ever get any decent sleep.
It's the kind of silence that pierces dreams.

The kind that a tortured mind can easily fill with demons of every type.
The kind that keeps you on edge all night with wide searching eyes and adrenaline rushes flooding in behind any foreign sound,
followed by a slow winding down of blood pressure and panic and heart beats.

The kind that when you suddenly wake up in it and glance at the alarm clock,
you hope like hell the first number isn't 3.

*

*It's moments like these that make me wish there was somebody else here with me,
if only for the reassurance that a nearby body can bring.
The sound of someone else's steady breathing.

And maybe, a naked back to trace the subtle valleys of while half-asleep,
thinking little epiphanyish-type thoughts that'll be forgotten by morning.
The kind that usually start or end with: "This is it."

Rage does nothing but wither
in the garden wall
still beating
as if it were actually alive
and not Lot's wife:
turned to salt.
My altar of anger is ash
and smoking embers,
reminders
of the heart I used to call mine
that breathed with desire
to change the tundra around it.
I was going to do so much good,
and now, look at me -
a walled garden
of dead things,
slain idols I worshiped
in my sleep,
dreams of revolution rotting
like rosy corpses
as the undertaker
wakes me up just enough
to suffocate from the dirt
of my own inaction.

I am weak-willed and nothing -
I die and live as a whisper
spoken between the grim reaper
tending my grave
and the grass growing from
my decaying soul.

the glasses through which I see the world
are painfully smashed
I see fault lines wherever I look
the faces of loved ones
blurred into anonymity
my own identity
blown to pieces
barely recognisable

I am lost in my own skin
seeing no way out
only broken glass
and shattered dreams

the light of my life
the cool glow coming from the
refrigerator

my emotions lurch
like a boat in a storm;
violent and unrelenting.
the time has come
to abandon ship
and sink to the inky depths
*calm at last

I have made a home
for the sadness living inside me
I have fed it with my fears
it has grown strong on my doubts
in return it gave me nothing
instead taking all it could;
my smiles
my strength
my sanity
until I am left barren and empty
a shadow of myself
a crumbling shell of a house
that depression claims as home

I pick at my sleeve
until the wool unravels
and think to myself
how much would it take
for me to unravel along with it?