it is october.
the last time i'd checked it was the 1st of september
and even before that, the 1st of august
but today, it is october.

i’ve woken up with a letter from the moon
suing me for emotional damages i shared
the previous night with it.

it started this way,
                                    "aching insane little thing, you ought to stop
                     otherwise you'll lose your shine completely someday."

but what of it has remained?
there’s venting, drafts upon drafts,
they could clinically round me up
and find everything that could go wrong has gone wrong
and i’ve become something that i—

i don't think the wanderers from past
would recognize me anymore,
but it is as they say,
you either live to tell the tale
or wake up to having been put to an early grave.

october, where the months ought to have begun,
but september just faded,
in the background with its music still playing.
august didn’t even get a chance.

and i can still hear it,
the inkling and remnants of it
come back to me in the nights as terrors,
and whatever glue keeps me still attached
like a stubborn hook to the wall.

cumbersome to stay,
i've wasted days upon days.
not reached anywhere,
no end to where i’ve found myself
in this forsaken place.

i'm fading away,
like leaves in the shape of who was a person before.
they’re drying out and it is fall
and soon it’ll be winter,
cold enough that barely any tree would remain covered,
and perhaps then it’ll be noticed
how bare bones remain of once where life existed.

and yet there is but some hope.

hope ought to remain,
otherwise this life wouldn't be true at all.
and this is just another page, another chapter.
the previous one didn't end on a full stop
but a semi colon.

so i need not know or wait upon,
i shall carry on reading
and hopefully if time does catch up
i'll be waiting, with open arms
to carry it along someday,
in some way, antagonizing,
skipping right over the pieces of this pain.

there's a poster on my wall that says:
                                                             "don't take life too seriously —
                                                               you'll never make it out alive."

i noticed it when i bought it,
but today i glanced
and it took me off guard.
i'd taken life too seriously.

poetry has too seeped in everywhere now —
in the blog i vent,
the accounts i hide,
everywhere wherein i’m not supposed to be me
and just not carry this act anymore.

hope was a ****** who backstabbed,
so now i'm left with nursing old wounds,
clad in clothes that'd fit june,
looking at the grandest game of all time,
i gotta end.

this time we shall once again start the tale
by watching the good stuff,
that's meant to make you feel good.
make a list of things,
a list i ought to follow
every time it does even in the slightest come true.

and if i shall pull the wipe cache card,
hope is a *****, nostalgia a drug,
memory an aphrodisiac.

call me an addict,
but whatever it is—
withdrawal that i'm carrying.

had it been may,
i’d have been preparing for the upcoming fall.
but i just left the store,
and this time forgetting all the decorations
i brought a safety pin
etched with a silver line to my soul.
tied a red string around the wrist, a stupid solemn knot.
a ring, too tight perhaps, but it grounded nonetheless,
i'm not dreaming anymore.