As I slip back into darkness I call your name. My own voice echoes back from the cold chasm filled with memories from the past. I failed to break the stone wall that guards your fragile heart. The crisp night chokes my dreams; untouched by your ghostly hands. If I could tunnel through I would be there in an instant, squeezing heavy droplets from the corner of my soul and sharing in the burden that keeps us both at bay. I’ll keep a tiny candle burning gently for your sight. It warms me just enough to make everything alright.

The chest feels heavy with a coat of thick, red paint.
It drips slowly to the ground, forming a pool on the linoleum.
You slip and fall, crashing hard as your head begins to feel woozy.
Pick yourself up.
Shake yourself off.
Clean up the paint and start a new day.
Tomorrow it happens.
The next day.
The next.
Stirring paint, dripping, slipping, sipping from the spring of life that causes so much pain and happiness and insanity all at once.
It’s what people life for.
And what they die for.
But rather than ruin a perfectly good floor.
I propose, instead, that we paint the town red.