Before you go, I want you to know what you did for me. The shackles that we wear are unfamiliar, but they etch the same pattern onto both our skins. We laugh at the same things and we hold silence for different pains. You help lessen mine and understand in a way that I have tried to all my life. I try to lessen yours, it feels like I'm just speaking but I hope it translates into something more. You have a beautiful mind that will be beautiful to the world but I wish I could get to know it better. Your little knowledges and vast understanding is not unappreciated, and although it hurts to say it, I'm happy that you're leaving. I'm happy that better places are about to be alight with your brilliance.

I told you, I really did. I told you this was exactly what I didn't want to be & maybe thinking like this is just a product of greed but life was real because I was sad & it feels like I'm better but those are just letters on a page in an obituary no one has to write. What's the point in swimming if the water's too shallow? What's the point in living if this mind stays hollow? The rope has been refashioned & the guns been unloaded but that's as far as I can get in being goaded to lead this good life.

I can't even remember what I did this week.

I told you that not wanting to exist was what made it worthwhile & you told me it would be better if I was skillful, half smiled. I live life in the moment but forget it the next, so I'm not sure you were right to say this was for the best. My brain feels superficial, an art piece on the wall, are my only options to feel everything or to feel nothing at all? So yeah, I'm not sad anymore but I did tell you so, & now that I'm happy I'm scared that you'll go.

I let the fire trace itself up the paper, breathed in the scent of things that disappear. I wasn't afraid & I wasn't in pain & that's a dangerous combination. I was desperate to feel as fire is desperate to burn.

You held me close, you told me my heart would always be yours. You told me you'd never tell a lie & you never did but with the morning wind you blew away. I never saw you again & I never saw anything besides you again.

We are built to withstand a blow to the head, a claw to the back, a knife to the throat. We are not made to stand like rock in the face of ever present wind. We are both the constructors and the constructed and the only way to survive is to keep building. Every creation I've ever made has not been destroyed, but it is gone. I live under mountains & in a world of possessions I can't call any my own. You wear me down, wind you are, & I am expected to be the super ego to your id.

I am made of plastic in a world of fire. I am made of God in a world meant for desire. I am not in the right place or the right time I want to be hurt & to commit crime. I want to be good incarnate & evil carnivorous. I feel nothing anymore in a sensory existence. If I feel too good I'll be punished if I feel bad I'll punish myself. In a time of heaven and hell I have built a purgatory.

She lived a life with gilded eyes,
With gilded tears come silent cries.