Our feet can't hold us down sometimes.
As old, worn out memories lash at our pale bony ankles.
Forget me, I've faded off into another world.
Our arms can't reach our eyes sometimes.
The harsh white light of the morning bears down on us like dull rusty razors.
Lose me, I've lost myself one hundred times before.
Our ears can't tune out those distant cries,
The wind oozes in, slapping up against silence.
Ignore me, I long for what you cannot give.
Our spines can't hold us high much longer,
As they slowly droop into angles meant for brooding.
Forgive me, for only then can you let me go.
Our hearts are slowly losing rhythm with the world.
Life has become to harsh--the future too shrouded by memories.
Leave me, somewhere in the past, with all the sweet nothing's and clouded laments to the unrelentless Gods that weave together beneath my toes.

Shrieking, all-in, nothingheldback laughter
Beats up against my skull,
Thudding, thudding.
Is this happiness observed?
Pools of wrinkles gather underneath
Squinted eyes,
Little silk kimonos crumpled at the foot of a bed.
Laugh lines fold and expand,
As if they are their own organisms,
Breathing in and out with the rhythm of life.

Somewhere else, there is crying,
***** feet and bruises the color of wilted pansies.
Undisturbed, they vibrate to a different frequency,
An isolated rhythm.
A symphony of cornflower and charcoal,
They dance about in a sad song of neglect.
Far away from the loud, booming laughter.

Oh, sunken eyes and sullen brows,
How have you not yet changed the world?
Thunder your despair,
Push up against the merriness and chrisanthimum bliss.

I do not miss you in moments,
But rather the lingering space that lies in between them:
The soft "nn" sound preceding "one mississippi"
Falls stagnant as I attempt to count out measurements of my grief.
Your presence is too large to be condensed into the language of time,
Hours and minutes limply droop over each other,
Until nothing is certain besides your existence.
Two mississippi, three mississippi,
I slowly drag out the syllables in a subtle defiance to your untimely exit.
Your time isn't yet over, I've kept you alive,
Pushing air into your crumpled lungs by counting sheep.
The moments in which you fell are recycled here,
Like stale air in a small cement cell,
They propel my time forward the same way they stopped yours.
I do not miss you during desperate sentences full of almost there prose,
But instead during the white space that runs between each line.

Four mississippi, five mississippi.

To be left a rotting corpse in the inky depths of my screaming, vacant soul
To taste the freshness of the air only to have it ripped so unnaturally from my shriveling lungs
Once sitting atop that merciful beacon of hope,
I find myself tumbling, grasping, gasping, clasping for some hold onto the beautiful signal

And who is to blame?
Who?
Certainly not you, for it was your hand who found me troubled in the merciless murky vapor
Your hand that lifted me from the bowels of hell and so dotingly destroyed my detriments

But had it not been for you I would have so happily, so cheerfully accepted my vacant vocation
Of restlessly, recklessly, ruefully running around without any remorse for my forlorn reality
For it is not the force of you freedom that loosed my heavy chains, but rather the form
That vicious vigor that stuffed my spirit with a seemingly ceaseless, incessant self-assurance

But for my essence to not identify isolation, to not recognize regret seems so conceited in comparison to yours
Which is ever growing, ever loving, ever laughing, ever knowing, ever telling, ever asking, ever showing, ever…
After all it was your being there that showed me how lonely I truly was, how pitiful of an existence I truly led
So now I state the obvious

Why?
Why go through all that endeavor, all that effort of effectively and essentially helping me escape my insanity just to throw it out the
Door is where you went, leaving me to collect the shambles and shards that was the life you made
Leaving me to collect these silly splinters just so that you could prove a point

A point well taken, a point notably noted, and a point you called no return
Return?
Return from what?
From the friendship promised, or the friendship broken, or the new twisted friends of which you’ve hardly spoken?

And so I take my leave, but I will return
I will not leave such a dear thing to burn
Burn in the essence of what we call hope
For, after all, you were the one who threw me the rope

I lay there...alone...cold
Clutching my stomach, I crawled in agony
Directionless, no goal
The silent pain of my enemies rage
Hot...
The rain poured down hard, blinding...freezing
I cried for life, the rain...
It washed my tears away
I screamed for help, the thunder
It denied my call
I lay there...Alone...lifeless
Soulless but I could here it in the distance
That voice...oh so familiar
Yet strange...it called me
Beckoning
Haunting
Death...

It's been forty three days since I have been in a haze
Yet I walk around in a daze
Not sure what to do with my time
Could sleep for hours but the nightmares won’t escape