My veins are sewers beneath my skin.
There is a cage where my skull should be
And inside this cage which stands like the skeleton of an October tree
There are worms that are knotted together in a way that allows them to think as one.
My stomach is full of writhing parasitoid wasps
That move in a way that makes them apparent to the eye that looks for them.
Only three months past they were injected into my bloodstream inside a miniscule submersible
Capsule.

My skin is nothing but maggots.
My tongue flails beneath the weight of hypodermic needles that are invisible even to the eye that looks for them.

The opinions of the worms are made apparent through my tongue even as it sprawls beneath the needles.
My lungs are full of dust and the dust is full of nacre and the nacre is wrapped around gypsum and graphite Which are dust to the eye that does not know these words.

Whether it’s 5 p.m or 5 a.m, I laugh as loud as I want.
Laughter is a stream of gold cascading through the air.
It is the end all, the ultimate painkiller.
The path to redemption.
Laughter.
Well, it is 5 a.m, but I’m not laughing.
I’ve been reading stories
Of sadness and sordidity,
romance and restlessness,
love and loneliness–all for hours on end.
So much for lightheartedness, there’s none of that here.
I’ve been reading amateur-made stories
That still tug at the deepest recesses of my depression.
One in particular inspired me to write a certain story of my own.
It was sad, it was juvenile,
It was beautiful, it was nostalgic.
The prose in that story should only ever be thought of
In the most proper manner:
shrouded in a hazy mist of wistfulness and bittersweet longing.
Different hues of glowing colors,
Images of fog.
For so long I thought I was through with this part of my life.
The part where I felt so lonely that I could drop dead of touch deprivation.
But it has returned.
Nothing will do to stop this acquired disease.
Mine is a loneliness, such as a thirst
That cannot be quenched with mere drops of water.
It becomes a way of life.
O’ joy, where do you reside?
Oh, forget it. You’re lost on me.