the day ends, dusk approaches
i sit across from a glaring monitor.
eyes glazed over, mind aflutter.
information streams into my brain in waves
(only some of it managing to stick).
i try my hardest to soak it up, and to let it wash over me,
wash my troubles away.
in a way, instead of bottling my trouble,
i wrap my shaking hands around it forcefully
plunging its head under the murky water
to muffle the yet inescapable drone that follows me
(but it won't give up the ghost
and my arms get tired sooner than stress will set me
alight from my cage).

see, i've had this
unshakeable
feeling lately.
between the hi's, hello's, and how do you do's
this sense of incredible, indelible
dread
looms over me like a weight.
beneath the paper mache mask of humor,
avoidance of heavy topics,
and general gleam that is the man everyone knows of me,
there's a boy
and he's confused, having feelings he's never had before
wondering things and asking questions,
experiencing things that he never read of in health textbooks,
attachments, bias, beliefs, respect, and fear of failure,
learning things the hard way that he never would have expected
(having read only about mockingbirds and shakespeare).
he bottles these thoughts and doesn't know where to put them,
scrambling to pick up the pieces in a flush of embarrassment,
hoping no one will call him out as the
******.
("what? no! i got 100% on this test because i bs'd it so hard. i'd never actually try.
what am i? a
loser?")
he's alone and he's
stressing, calculating, hoping, dreaming, loving, hating, lusting, wailing, and
teetering on the edge of the precipice of the
abyss that
whispers
softly, soothing, sultry.

but the tricky part isn't the looming weight,
nor the calling and the teetering;
i could almost bear its press on my shoulders almost to the point of breaking
or the tremble accompanied by a height that i couldn't possibly comprehend.
but some nights
it,
(and i mean this
dread)
it,
twists above me and wraps around my neck.
and what scares me most of all is that sometimes it feels
comfortable
like a breath of air escaping from the very furthest corner of my lungs.
or a promise,
a secret panic door
with the key to a lock that i know i'd never open.
it coils around me like a noose attached to nothingness.