I'm trying to shout over the screams.
Trying desperately to be heard over the blaring horns.
I try to see through the fog that strangles me.
I blink, hard, trying to get rid of the tears that swell in my eyes.
They are unwelcome,
like the troubles that caused them.
Grief
and agony
and doubt
encase my mind in impenetrable fog.
When I try to look through it, it only gets denser.
Stumbling and lurching through the mist on unsteady feet.
Screams tearing from my throat,
trying to express the agony that I feel so deeply embedded within me.
But this agony,
this pain,
this torture,
cannot be expressed,
Cannot be summarized.
The tears come in earnest, now.
Their salty taste touches my tongue and I hate that it is such a familiar taste.
Such a present taste.
The screaming won't stop.
My ears overflow with the sound.
The embodiment of my unspoken pain.
The things I have never said all shoved into one noise.
My head pounds,
all of the secrets shoving and tripping over each other,
searching desperately for a way out.
The walls that surround me squeeze.
I push and kick and claw at them,
but they stay firm.
My fists shatter.
My legs fall out from under me, giving up.
My nails are jagged.
And the wall is there,
pressing,
crushing,
trapping me.
Helpless.
Broken.
Trying to put the pieces together, but they no longer match.
Trying to find my smile, but it has fallen into the stormy seas of my anguish.
Trying,
trying,
trying.
My eternal curse.
To try, and to fail.
Trial and err
and err
after err.
A never ending circle of my torment.

Dear Death,
It seems as if everyone holds a grudge against you.
You have taken someone from everyone.
You have even taken everyone from someone.
Some threads you cut short.
Others evade your fatal scissors for longer.
But everyone's thread demands to be severed.
But I wonder if you are only doing your masters bidding?
Are you just a puppet on strings?
A thread yourself, to be maneuvered freely into a tapestry by a higher master?
Being blamed,
mocked,
ridiculed,
just for following orders?
It's like punishing the soldier for the general's war crimes.
Or are you the puppetmaster?
The keeper of all of the strings?
Do you control the balance of the universe?
Do you send the demons to do your bidding, or do you do the demons work?
There is so much that is unknown about you.
We talk about you like we have solved your puzzle,
but you are a labyrinth,
everchanging,
everlasting.
I hope one day we can appreciate your mystery.

Sincerest regards,
Humanity

Dear Love,
People search for you.
They look in the faces on the street trying to find you.
People lose you.
You fade away from them, leaving them only with grief.
What they don't understand is that you are everywhere.
You are in every fibre of the universe.
People just don't think to look.
They think that you are just an emotion to be felt.
Just the pounding of a heart,
the quickening of breath,
the eruption of butterflies in a stomach.
You are all of those things, but so much more.
You are the sun's rays on the wet earth.
You are the branches of a tree, stretching outward,
outward.
You are the whisper of a child late at night when awoken by nightmares and in need of their mother's comforting arms.
You are the hand of a painter.
You are the mind of a genius.
You are passion, though not always held passionately.
You are devotion, though not always devoted to.
You are reverence, though not always revered.

Sincerest regards,
Humanity

Dear Time,
So many have sought to escape you.
Either that, or they want more of you.
They beg in desperation.
You turn your icy shoulder,
denying them in their cries for mercy.
In the end, you claim everyone for your own.
Wearing them down until they are nothing but bone,
and after that you grind them into nothing.
You rob people of their long lives.
You move quick and just out of reach.
Unless there is suffering,
then you move like a calm lake,
slow,
contemplating.
I understand.
You just want to feel wanted.
You are tired of being used,
wasted,
ignored,
taken for granted.
This unappreciation comes from every direction.
Squeezing you tight into a box of neglect.
You just want to show them.
To make them see.
To make them pay attention.
Their grief.
Their hatred.
Their longing.
But you are like the hammer to the nail.
It is hard for the nail to appreciate the hammer,
no matter it's intentions.
The hammer wants them to appreciate it,
after all,
it is putting them to good use.
But all the nail sees is the method.
Never the outcome.

Sincerest regards,
Humanity

My breath rushed out of my lungs all at once,
an ocean of air flooding from my mouth.
Shock waves crashed over me.
The pure wonder that enveloped me was like
wind.
All sensation, with no time to think.
Just pressing,
flowing,
feeling.
In the moment I felt helpless.
Lost at sea,
wave after wave pounding,
pushing me from the surface.
Trying to breathe,
gasping,
flailing,
desperate.
Panic seized the depths of my mind,
each a sharp needle,
stabbing,
digging into the flesh of my brain.
I began to crumble from the weight of it all.
All of the expectations,
secrets,
lies,
mysteries,
everything.
Everything.
T­he weight of everything crushed me.
Dust to dust.
Nothing more.

My head came alive with whispers of excitement.
My heart beat to the rhythm of a chorus of drums
all in sync.
Electricity coursed through my veins,
replacing the blood.
Your eyes made me come alive with wonder.
Your smile made my stomach flood with the fluttering of a thousand butterflies.
Then you looked away.
The feeling faded,
as ink from an old, yellowed page.
My smile melted off of my face.
Tears trailed down my cheeks,
creating paths of pain.
You couldn't even look at me.
Couldn't bear to even glance in my direction,
as if just seeing my small, sloped frame caused you to crumble in waves of agony.
That realization,
that quick,
sure,
thought,
broke me to pieces.
Shattered me as if I was no more than a glass girl.
And I suppose that is what I am.
A fractured piece of glass in a world that was made to break me.