People keep asking me how I’m doing.
If I’m getting better or if I’ve taken the time to process what’s happened.
If I’ve sought professional help for the metal percussions induced by my career-ending injury.

In all honesty though, professional help is futile. It can’t save me now.
I’m walking through hell and sitting in a ring of fire discussing the temperature of the searing flames would be idiotic.

Why would I allow the flames to dance along my already seared skin longer than necessary?
I know they’re hot.
I know I’m in hell.

I know the pain I feel every day is real and crippling.

Talking about this pain wouldn’t end it. It wouldn’t diminish the heat. It wouldn’t help.

I need to keep walking.
I just need to keep walking.

My crippled body can’t run anymore, but I’ve got to keep walking.

Others continue to rush by. Frantic because they’ve never felt the flames.
They aren’t familiar with the burn. The idea of being in hell is novel.

They are novices.  

But life hasn’t been kind to me.
These flames are familiar with every curve of my body and they dance around with trained feet.


I’ve been in hell for years.


People continue suggesting I find the light at the end of the tunnel, but that’s near impossible here.
I’m too blinded by the brightness of a vehement flame.
Sizzling with an angry vigor for the lack of gratitude I bestowed on my past life.

It mocks the speed at which I used to be able to run. It laps sardonically at the feet that used to run cheer-inducing speeds without thanks from their owner.

But crowds don’t cheer my name anymore.
I now stand on the sidelines and watch my team play.

I burn alive for the game I used to breath and as I watch each and every game, the deep breaths of oxygen only continue alighting the fire.

There’s no way out it seems, but I will try to keep walking.


Because talking is futile.



Note:
Spinal diseases are crippling mentally and physically. Watching the body you've sculpted for years turn to mush because you can't workout is dilapidating .
The despair and helplessness are unfamiliar feelings, feelings that can't be overcome. Disease is disease and sometimes it can't be stopped. Sometimes, it just becomes a burden to bear.


And sometimes people aren't strong enough.

It's different when careers end after four years of college. An expected end, an anticipated end. But when things you love are taken from you abruptly, before your finished. The pain is exponentially worse.

Exponentially. Worse.

The world I’m living in is dilapidating.
I’m standing surrounded with buildings, things and people.
I’m just watching as piece by piece they are crumbling.

Falling,
every heavy piece of world turns into a dust and feather,
sometimes into snowflakes and drops of fog.
They are floating slowly in the air, being taken up with the wind
that takes them away with small impulses far from me,
mixing them,
destroying them.

I’m watching the world turning into decorations,
flat picture of it.
I try to descry whether there is another world
outside these decorations or at last another decorations.
Probably there is just a blank nothing.

I do not know if I have to take a hammer and ruin all that left or try
to collect those dust, feather and water and mix them
with something more stable, and put it into holes
to fix my world of decorations.

Still I’m standing and watching, confused, breathless.

Suddenly, while I’m standing among the soundless apocalypse,
the soil under my feet turns soft. It dries and turns
into a sand that seeps through the narrow funnel,
pulling me inside.

There are less of sand drains around me as I
keep falling into an endless abyss. I am
somewhere beyond two realities. I am
falling and hope this hole could appear to be a rabbit-hole which finally leads me to the Wonderland.

And so he went on to take a poll, disguising his dilapidating hope as a courtesy extended to those sitting in front row seats.

All dressed for the occasion, ready to request more than an autograph - he promised a single one to whomever would shed light, offering the scalpel capable of removing (without scar ) the departure of his muse from the pages of his unaccepting heart.

Some stood quiet, others spoke under their breath, awaiting his reaction to synchronized confetti released into the air, settling at his feet and every corner of his despair.

"Perhaps, there is someone else" said a woman to his left.

Yes, there is always someone else, but she was never one to not forgive an insignificant trespass - she understood love in its raw form and would not ask for mine to fit a norm. He replied before moving on to the next confetti flake, kicking it over as if the color was not to his expectation.

Confetti flakes as those of snow
should not be swallowed whole
unless of course you settle in
the shadows and ignore your want for more.

His pen undrawn, intending to retire for the night (short of a promise to come back) he heard a voice:

"The sea cannot be his, a fisherman would know this."

Enraged, he demanded the voice come forward, repeat this abhorring claim and face the wrath of his disbelief.

The room stood silent.

We walked the length of the tributary in the Simi hills tonight.
timid lulls of filthy water lap against the rims of our shoes
as we trudge under a dilapidating sun that breathes heavy over the
San Fernando Valley.
It is too warm for jackets so we trudge side by side decorated with
summer regalia, the wind is hot for September and I watch as you
soak the sweat from your brow on a green bandanna.
As we approach highway 134 you stop and turn into the setting sun
the blue of your eyes lights up the green rim around an olive pupil
and you smile that deep, voracious grin that throws me into
an almost sleep like daydream.
and in this moment, with the palms swaying in the distance and the cry of the Northern fulmar straying too far from the beach,
I decide I would go anywhere with you
even if the sun never came out to push me to this place.