Smoke.
Everywhere.
No escape.
Lungs choked by the burning gas floating in the air.
Shrieks of delight in the background
make me wonder what joy there was.
The dead grass crunched under my feet
and engulfed in flame after a tiny, glowing ember
floated from the smoke filled sky and to the ground.
I scream for help
but it is mistaken for joy.
For a smile plastered on an alabaster face and hands
raised to bathe in the shower of sparks
that rain down upon the earth.
Eyes burn with smoke, blurring every image
already distorted by the smog that hangs over the land.
Smiling faces contort to demon
and white winged angels claw from the ground
chanting hymns of forgiveness and eternal life.
But, as if taken by surprise,
the criminal smoke flees the scene of its crime leaving me;
standing there salty rain pouring from
honeysuckle eyes roaming the ankle high grass for signed of life.
Sure enough, carpenter ants skittered under
the pale moonlight rushing back to their mother queen.
Demented angels
melted back into the ground,
not even a mound left from where they clawed through.
Demons smiles reverted to tooth filled grins.
'Kathy,' came a far off voice. 'That was epic!'
Self-made rain stained my cheeks
but no longer poured from my eyes.
Elated strangers whom I felt I knew
overwhelmed my frozen figure, shouting about
my amazing performance I didn't know I'd taken part in.
I muttered under my breath,
'God bless the U.S.A'

it grew and grew until i couldn't sink into my chair anymore.
this growing anxiety that flared up inside me whenever someone walked past me.
irrational
and confusing
but real,
very real.
paralyzed where i was sitting,
i couldn't even lift my head.

this can't be happening.

this wasn't happening.

as she called my name, everything went silent
and everything stopped.
deer in the headlights,
i shook this feeling off and smiled,
i'm okay.

i first felt confused.
everything seemed to slip between my fingers
were they even my fingers?
now i was completely terrified.
this sense that everything was foreign like i've never seen these surrounding in my entire lifetime.
i didn't
couldn't feel myself.
my
it
those fingers.
i saw them move as fingers do, but they didn't seem like my hands, my fingers, my flushed palms.
it felt surreal.
even the people i knew seemed unknown to my eyes.
it gave me this churn in my stomach.
a churn that screamed "danger".
but why?
don't i know these people?
i should know how they act
how they talk
how they walk
how they move.
but when i saw them talk
when i studied how their lips formed around words
i heard nothing.
there was no familiarity in their voice and the words they spoke from their mind to their tongues.
it sounded
like static.
like white noise.
the nothingness that's heard in a room of complete silence.
i felt like white noise.
that fuzziness; the pins and needles kind when you haven't moved in hours.
i could've brushed it off.
maybe tried to refocus my brain into thinking that
"yes. all of this is familiar. don't be so dumb."
but i couldn't.
all i felt was bile in my throat as i internalized my imminent panic.
it was settling there in the pit of my stomach all because
i couldn't recognize my own voice.
i couldn't recognize their faces.
i couldn't recognize where i was nor could i recognize why i was there in the first place.
what was my purpose?
why do i wake up, go to school, come home, sleep.
why do i do these things that give me little to no substance in my life?
this regular schedule
of constance.
that's what caused this white noise.
the white noise that pressed anxiety and stress into my chest
making it heavier
making it harder to breath
making it worse.
i hated it.
but i couldn't do anything about it.
this white noise.
oh, how much i despised the thing.
but
all i can do is revel in the moment until it passes.

Standing in the bathroom
Between the toilet and the sink
As such the mirror
Between the waste and stark display
Afraid of my face

What's more my eyes sink
Sunken more than usual
Their grasp of differences
Between non-fiction and
The fictional decays

My arm is off and on again
Now product of the medicine
My father and his father and
His father's father made
In sparing no expense

What's more my eyes see
Dot matrix ghosted notes
On patterns previously
Invisible through my
Corrupted nodes restored

Reborn

One thing though that I
Should let the nurses know
I can now transpose
Simple items left to right
On focusing my mind

Earlier I made the toilet
Paper jump between the
Edges of the room
I then successfully
Subtracted and multiplied

Dispassionately cast with no compass to live,
I dwindle like the stars that die, transmissive.
This depth is cold without you or the love I invented.
I embraced it, despite on me you've been imperfectly imprinted and indented.

Take me or leave me, anything to fill that void.
Every intimacy and secret which you've ever enjoyed.
You've spent time designing black holes of savage ruination,
Dying light that spirals into native perturbation,
Inside the one who'd always, and still, followed.
Idly droning black ink... How will we fair tomorrow?

Chasing you, a fading eclipse,
Orbiting that star no one can see.
In a vast, open nothingness, with an only invisible me.

The hot tails of asteroids burn it away.
You had warned me of them, but I never turned to stray.
From a promise, for myself, to inspire the brightest brilliance.
To think I'd been so audacious to assume my own resilience.
The transformation and expansion of what's more massive than us,
I can't possibly predict what may become of scattered dust.

Time moved through me
forgetting to carry me
with her.

And I waited.

Like the businessman
at Flinders Street Station
- stagnant -
while the world passed him by,
and time moved through him,
in fast motion;
forgetting to whisper past
his cheek
and sweep the petals
from his eyes.

For he carries a garden inside,
but all gardens
need time.

day and night melt into each other, and with them my muse
time becomes senseless, sense timeless, an endless scene,
sadness burns away, a wisp of smoke curling like the old telephone wire of my childhood home
but there's no connection: it disappears. and yet, it is still here
though intangible to me now, and thus i've lost my grip on things i thought i knew
nobody told me what i'd be losing once sadness loosened her hold,

my weakened clasp on creativity is a noose around my throat
i believed them when they said that art was born of pain,
i just didn't know how much of my own designs were intricately weaved
with misery, sprinkled with distress and agony
and it's not as though they left me, but they rolled to the far side of the bed
there's a gap i can't bridge, where something should be but instead nothing is

the realisation of your own dependency on despondency
is almost as gutting as the feeling in the first place.
depression's numb spells are a relief, until you start to notice what's missing.