I need to feel alive again.
---Need,
   like air---
I need it to be alive.

I'm so jaded
the infectious numbness
has pushed me out of my skin
---as if it were a glove,

and my soul is the naked hand exposed to sunlight.

Submerge me in life's cool pools
because as a fish I am
gasping and gulping for sustenance,
for water to breathe.

Laid out completely bare in
the barren landscape of emotionless doldrums,
barely frozen but numb just the same,
I stare at the permanent face

fog-breathed in the static mirror of the sky.

Watch
myself
live

as if everything is a dream I am both
wholeheartedly devoted to
and
watching from afar.

Watch myself walking---
---I am walking---
but sleeping awake
and feeling nothing.

Awake, awake, awake
every sleepy night---

who's story am I living now?