I'm here once more, but then again when was I not?

as if my eyes have ever shifted from my reflection. I'm sick of it.

I don't know how long I've been here; this dimly lit trap gives away no time.

all else melts around me, pools into ripples of my distorted reality.

I sit and I watch my face. I long for the familiarity of yesteryears that I cannot trace.

my skin yawns open, wills to consume itself - porous, velutinous, and brittle.

this is who I am, this is what I see:

tyrian purple flesh decomposing, falling inside my bones that split and splinter;

my mind climbing out of my head, fugitive from the skull's prison;

breaths, ribbons of grotesque, not deep enough to last and not shallow enough to be numbered.

everything without is human (decaying though it is), and everything within is dissimulation.

this molten, fragmented un-being doesn't escape my sight. these eyes have cried out for respite -

and yet they exist, the odd and sole constant in the mirror before them -

wistful for oblivion and feasting on fear. what's gone has kept me alive for longer than it appears.

this body doesn't even feel real. my fingertips burn at every touch.

what more shrapnel does this heart desire until it plays out its final beat?