there's a certain feeling
that creeps up
through the hairline fissures
in your brittle bones,
on frigid hollow nights
at the bewitching hour,
when silent stillness descends
a muted film of
forgotten bittersweet memories
over the darkness.

and honey-yellow street lamps
cast ghostly shadows on the sidewalks, who
hold your hand in solidarity
as you trudge through
empty space,
and the dampened humming of the buzz saw
never really fades,
playing tricks on the music in your ears
spinning haunting discordant loops over
sullen sugar-coated melodies.

it's as if you've stepped through a portal
of time and space
where there is no singular destination
but transportation to the
eternal place
in you
where that feeling has lived
every time
it has arisen in the past,
where that feeling will return
in all the visits to come.

and the place is familiar
so you settle into the bed of nails
comfortably,
breathe in the sharp sting of ragged pain,
and float through the museum
of recycled thoughts
on angry waves.
reluctant transparency
plays its hide-and-seek game, and
you re-learn the methodology
of picking up the particles
and packing them
into steel cages
into cardboard boxes
into dusty attics
into black hole space ships -
sending them into the void.

the mundane madness
in the
mystic mirage of memorializing  mourning.