There is a silence.

A silence snaking through the empty paths in my head.

Someone turned the radio to mute.

A static signal, but I’m far

too numb to notice.


Take a white pill.

Let it coat your insides;

thick paint washing you out in white.

I’m numb again, riding a wave that doesn’t

meet the beach.

Suspended in a still ocean;

can you imagine waves never breaking?

A vast ocean that never rolls or tumbles?

That’s me on the inside.

I’m regulated and monitored to the second;

my body ticks over into offence.

Prevent the storm.

Be still.

Please.


Make sure you take that white pill.

Let it soothe that restless turning;

cogs sparking and running;

stop the thoughts from chasing you.

People notice more about me than I do.

‘You seem happier’.

Do I?

I don’t notice a thing; pins and needles aren’t

pinpricks stabbing up my leg,

but a dull ebb.

You think I seem better, less anxious;

less on edge, waiting for a collapse to override my system.

But I don’t feel a thing.

They keep me from having to worry about a feeling.


Is that white pill making your horrors fade away?

Are your demons drifting to some other realm?

Are they scuttering along stained walls;

colonising the deepest shadows on the inside;

hiding in fright?

I don’t know if they are running scared. I don’t feel anything to

tell me they are still here or there.

I can’t remember.

I’m just drifting along plain sands; I know I should sense the heat of the

desert, but I don’t. It’s just coarse sand under my feet.

I’m stable. For now. Drifting through listless,

silent voids with myself.

Life and people I can still react and sense and speak with.

But you have become a distant echo, distorted through space;

muffled and hollow tones behind a vacant door.


I sense you. I know you. I can tell you I care for you.

But I can’t do the same for myself.

I simply don’t know.

Tick, tick, tick,

each second monitored and regulated.

I feel the pulse as that little white pill surges along my streams and rivers.

Helping me. Helping you stay beside me.

But I don’t feel I thing.

I’m grateful I can escape like this;

but I also despise the necessity of escape, in this way.

Alone.

Floating.

I don’t feel a thing.