t.
it's a malignant disease
a six-letter word; tipping off tongues
armed with locks and keys.
cloaked within the folds of lucid sight,
its bare grip, it holds tight,
suspending a sonorous expression of disbelief.

a.
there is no direction.
instead we are shoved onto the stage of shadows
for a lifetime of grief,
clinging to words of forgotten past.
if self-recognition is a sin,
then I am a glutton
starving for their hungry eyes.

l.
and so, insecurities grow,
and without mention
we chase for the escape to break surface tension.
rushing to dreams we were meant to prolong -
and although we're given choice,
we're still hunted in this vicious game
forced to put down
forced to ease
mirages,
conjured by delusions that everlast the time we're given...

e.
yet in my sleep I ask for mercy,
and glass eyes never shut.
I know I've lost my sheen,
still I yearn to deceive
poor reflections that plastered smiles
can no longer convey.

n.
oh the pride of the gifted!
how it has bestowed immortality to me
in this foreign home called vertigo;
now all I do is scream to slow down
on this never-ending highway,
polishing this obsession for perfection.

t.
my passion's run away,
i don't know who to please...
so to the victims of the pride:
forgive me.

there is a festering wound you do not touch.
it sits here, dormant, at the edge of shallow breaths.
sometimes I’ll draw the curtains
and feel it’s cold throbbing in the darkness
against my chest,
pumping a stampede under my skin;
sometimes that howl and wail
drives my blades up to the walls -
those plaster membranes,
crumbling membranes,
pulsating
till it echoes a crawl.

it waits most days by that crack in the door,
for that shadow on the floor to grow fonder.

nothing will pull me from this sleep.