Were they such fragile hands as these, those that built all this?
How did they find their way to sleep on nights so cold as this?
Before the stars gave their permission
and the mountains hadn't noticed
what did man think when he woke to find
the world still stood?
From here it looks a lot like a trap, to me,
there aren't any answers to this riddle.
I don't want to be alive anymore,
I've known that since I was thirteen.
I think everyone has. This is no news to you, though.
But that is no excuse for this,
the filth I've let accumulate,
stood by smoking a cigarette watching the drains clog
with clumps of fine blonde hair and purple-green leaves
and embracing that same old smell of stagnation and rot.
"I was there," he told me, "when things changed up for good,"
and he chattered out clipped images, too cold to sleep,
"There were fires in the sky, it was brilliant like a dream,
I was standing in the street and what stood out most to me,
there was someone in the window of the house across the street
and they tore their eyes away from the coming of the dark
long enough to look me in the eyes
and draw their curtain."
It's been all of twenty years, and that's enough.
I asked to be excused at eighteen,
but someone with a louder voice than me
must have shaken his head at my request.
I remember waking up.
The world still stood, and I wept.