This feeling, it’s not just a cloud hanging over me, it’s a whole **** storm, and I brought it on myself. My chest aches, yeah, but it’s not just anxiety anymore; it’s guilt, sharp and cold. And my stomach… God, it’s not just churning from dread, it’s from the memory of how I made their stomach churn, how I tied their insides in knots. I can almost taste the bile now, from the sheer regret of it all.
I keep trying to tell myself, "It's just a phase, you'll get over it." Like the pain I caused will just evaporate. But it doesn't. Every single day, that heavy, gray cloud is still there, darker now, because it's stained with what I did. When I look in the mirror, I don't just see a tired person; I see the **** who broke their heart, the one who took their trust and stomped on it. That vibrant person I used to be? They’re gone, replaced by this hollowed-out shell that’s constantly on the verge of throwing up from the shame.
Is this it? Is this just how I am now? The person who wrecked something beautiful, who caused so much pain? The thought just makes my stomach clench tighter. I wish it was just a temporary sadness, a bad mood I could shake off. But this feels deeper, more entrenched. It’s not just me anymore; it’s the ghost of what I did, haunting every single moment. And I can’t help but wonder if the good in me, the person who wasn't capable of such damage, has just withered away for good, leaving only this wreckage behind.

I’ve only ever seen two outcomes
in terms of meeting people:
you’re either betrayed
or forgotten about.

and sometimes I’d rather take
the malicious stabbing of bad faith
over the slow waltz with the long knife.


that’s all.

I continued to shake in fear as we moved deeper into the bleak jungle of Vorboon, the canopy above suffocating us like body-clung latex. The torturous heat produced from me crystalline salt of the sweat gland, cascading in hallucinogenic fragments. Mirrors, reflecting refracted light, curved around us and confused the spectrum of amalgamated forms.

"Outside-Inwards Jenkins, please, I cannot take this any longer! We must leave this writhing jungle!" I wept and fell to my knees in lamentation.

"Do not weep-weep, earth-being, for we have arrived upon the temple's entrance."

The temple soared above us as if in the dream of some secluded architect creating cataclysmic structures within his slumber. Its beauty was truly beheld, by us, fading into mist-forged fog, reminiscent of the Marabou stork or the Shoebill.

Upon the temple's steps stood the long-necked man, Scatard Acrosdaune. His countenance was elongated with sinister elation; unquestionably bizarre in every way I had ever conceived. Everything about his appearence was long and disconcerting, as if he were the echo of an echo of a man.

"Please, thou welcome most unto the existential temple of the Abstract Scroll. Scatard Acrosdaune, I, shall be your guide within the depths." Now he pauses with ominous intent.

"Where is thine scroll? Where is thine scroll? Where is thine scroll?"

Within the temple, corporate blocks of incestuous dual notation, rippling within a multitudinous alignment of masonry, partook in the abuse of subterfuge in order to forget the Sea Horns. We would head deeper still, deep into oblique chambers of solitary apparition, conjuring that which had plagued our collected mental cognition.

With cascading light faltering, lurid transcendence of encumbered paralysis began. Physical forms traversing innumerable catacombs of dread— between concrete moulded into the shape of modernity and totem poles transpiring against the import of collected consciousness, inspiring gelatinous brain matter— had overcame us.

Sliding through abyssal-black tar of stroking, crawling, writhing primal sludge, subsequently escaping through pores of sweat coagulation. We allowed silk-woven experience to be spun within a lair of manifestation, coinciding with visions of mutilation!

it’s sad to say
that nowadays
a smile
is more often
used
to hide depression
rather than
express
happiness.

Today I woke into a nightmare.
I rushed out the door, already late for work.
Behind the stream of cars the sun greeted me
with refractive beauty only seen in the greatest masterpieces.
I remarked that my eyes hurt.
the streams slow flow,
Increased my despair.
A twisted metal monolith,
caused the trucks to come in tow.
I drove past a chaotic scene.
I was annoyed at my lack of discipline.
A wayward bubble trapped in a slow stream.
Never wondering how I was supposed to know.
As a well rested wonderer I sat in my chair,
Ended the day with good time spared.
My birthday had proceeded without a hitch.
Neither laid out on a road or sickly in my bed.
The indifferent world greeted me,
with every boon it had to spare