Recently,
I posted a picture
of my bare feet
walking in the rain
with the hashtag
numb.

The thing is that the picture got a few likes
but no one knew what the real message was
hidden behind my bare feet.

Home
has made me numb
to sadness,
the police,
true care
and generosity,
creating the facade that
blocks me from the world.

Boarding school
has made me numb
to grades,
fear,
anxiety,
slowly stacking the bricks
to complete my facade.

I would like to say
that something broke my facade
or took down some bricks,
but it only continues to build
so I end this poem in hope
that the weight off my chest
lifts at some point.
That the connections I lose to my facade
find their way back together.
That the relationships that drift away
can be replaced.
That the self doubt and self hatred
can be eliminated.
That the need to build a complete facade
has ceased.
But for now, I am stuck
in a constant
numbness.

The clock stops at 6:40 pm local time.

I'm watching through the attic window as the hands stop. The moon's light reflects off ornate gray steel, stopped in precice alignment with faded roman numerals.

Curious, I stand and push up the glass, scan the street below for any signs of movement. Nothing. Nothing's moving.

Standstill.

Then the outline of a falling leaf catches my eye. Heaven only knows where it came from. I certainly don't. It isn't moving anymore, isn't falling as it's supposed to. As I realize what I'm seeing, I notice even more discrepances - things so odd my eyes skipped over them at first: A large brown moth halted in place, wings frozen on a downstroke. Several candles, wicks lit but not burning, not flickering, visible behind my neighbor's curtain.

As I stare at the world around me, eyes wide and definitely not heavy with sleep anymore, my heightened senses tingle. Heaviness travels, did you know? It's physics. Gravity. Something to do with lift, too, I think, chest heaving as invisible bands of iron tighten around my ribs.

Time to sleep...

Thud.

Outside the window, the clock hands turn.

6:41.

crystal glass glows under sunlit lances,
trails its shadows over blood red carpet
embroidered with dying embers of
golden thread.

kings never walked here,
and yet
the ***** crystal glints beneath
moonlight,
dusty shafts racing through the caked dirt
to touch threadbare ashes
where embers once glowed