There is an ever growing forest within my chest, viridescent canopies endlessly reaching towards powder blue skies like hands extended upwards in prayer Vividly mesmerizing flowers of imagination and life bloom in scattered unmarked paths for meandering souls Sadness flows in endless fountains pouring forth rapidly rushing streams of velvet indigo and starlight Crumbling riverbanks signal the beginnings of tentative doubts I’ve become aware of the weight of heavy shackles curling around my wrists like thick vines and ivy twisting over old bricks Nature reclaiming my insides, society disdaining and threatening to capture and drag me beneath the underbrush I feel the unmistakable pang of hopelessness nesting its thorns just below my ribcage, etching itself into my skin like stonemasons carving their legacy into mountain faces My body is sacred ground, a temple of an apathetic deity who’s staked ownership over the emotions that run deep like ocean currents in my veins My heart pumps opalescent despair, washing up on the shores like waves on new sands of lands I’ve yet to see My forest lays on an island within the bermuda triangle, unreachable by sea or sky My emotions act as geomagnetic pulses and methane vents to confuse your aeronautical and sea faring instruments, causing your vessels to come crashing down and sinking into the vast expanse of rolling royal blue unknown I exist for the sole purpose of straining inspiration and failing aspirations Those inky black buds slowly unfurling in the core of my being, remnants giving way to wilting foliage, petals listless at my feet, eroding with the will of misery and time with vibrant colors burning to ashen corpses With my lips I inspire hope, yet my own lack thereof hollows me out like rotting jack o lanterns with light flickering despondently through gaping hole, my eyes, liquid light vaguely sauntering downwards, softly dripping into my hopeful reserves like torrential rain Drumming like the thrumming of my rushing blood in my ears and the powerful thunder of waterfalls cascading in the distance, returning to earth from their perpetual perch atop towering mountains A jungle of my own endless shame carves me like a sculpture, eroding me like oceans and cliff faces over thousands of years, with fear uncoiling like deep blue carpets of jagged glass running like rivers, squeezes the paralyzing uncertainty into my blood like an injection. Turmoil joins self loathing, they loom above like my own personal berlin wall, disappearing into the white clouds composed of nervousness and doubt, separation from all I long to aspire to on the other side