From my heart

Still strangle me

Snared, caught upon

Unspoken love

Frayed and worn

Like sunshine bleach

Poured from the southeastern sky

Neglected, forgotten

Wings of flightless hope

Cracked paint and desiccation

A crooked spine, and

Ribs fractured, torn

Split and splayed

As hunter’s game

Snared not by beast

But man.

Withered hide

Hardened flesh

A carcass, in every sense

Stripped

Of dignity and life

Broken, snapped

of light

and solace

and feel nothing but ice

does it dim and falter

with my presence?

gradual, perhaps

As dust gathers

devours

leaving only darkness

and solitude

But now I wish to be with my grief, my sadness; a manifestation of what I had imagined, crushed in silence.

I have no right to mourn.

And yet I am anguished, an insignificance that none would care to recognise. It is knowing my incompatibilities and harbouring hatred for those who do not see me.

Is it hatred, truly? No. It is fear.

It is paranoia. Of course it is. I am terribly paranoid. I fear rejection. I fear abandonment. I fear being forgotten. I fear replacement. But these are not baseless; they are tangible, evidenced in history.

How can I not feel this way?

I no longer guard my heart and have allowed it to fall from its cage. I open myself to those who would not do so for me. I try with futility and fail.

Most of all I am disappointed in myself. It is cyclical, and thus should be avoidable, but I allow it to happen.

I hate myself for it. I have tried not to but I do.

It is the same every time. I think for a moment too long that perhaps it will be different but it never is. I cannot force people to understand. I cannot make anyone care. I would not want to regardless.

I have left many of the places that I once saw as communities. I have cut ties with people that no longer wish to put in effort. I am sick of being treated this way. I am more sick of the fact that I am naïve enough to think that it might be different.

I also welcome it, for it is a reason to stay indoors, shut away from the life beyond these walls, that I need not feel guilt for seeking silence.

But as night crawls ever closer and the dark devours the day, I find myself craving old comforts even more so than before. Motivation is fleeting, swallowed by the mundane, and my desire for variety diminishes.

I become comfortable with merely being, existing; perhaps not comfortable, but numbed. A preferable state to the intensity of summer, but it is the quiet that breeds complacency.

It was today, in fact, that I first noticed the ache of Autumn, present in my bones. The pain that returns year after year, once the temperatures drop, and the atmosphere changes.

For the second year now, that pain has spread to my hands; I have noticed my heart struggles particularly in the mornings to provide adequate flow. By the time the day is done, it hurts to hold anything with considerable weight. It is depressing to think that this pain shall only get worse.

I am made to be, to exist, to love, yet it is overwhelming, flooding into my vessel to the point of drowning, a songbird choked in downpour. What hope remains when innocence dies?

Yet the loneliness is here, now.

I feel barren. Empty. My core echoes with nothing.

I am unreachable. I do not want to be. But I have placed myself here.

I feel so terribly weak, powerless yet possessed, made to stay awake and conscious that I must live through the suffering.

The frustration and overwhelm in my mind truly holds my vessel captive in a state of sheer panic. I tremble and falter; saliva pools and I press down the urge to vomit. I cannot stand upright anymore.

Of course, it is not so simple.

I have been so anxious. Too anxious to function, and my health is suffering for it.

The temptation to weigh myself has come back. I have had no appetite, recently, and it has not been due to a concentrated effort, either.

I find myself longing for a life that no longer belongs to me.

——————

Truthfully I have been in a poor state since learning of someone’s death, who, unfortunately, I did not give much thought to when he was alive.

I think, I saw far too much of myself in him; or, at least, the person I could have been, in both positive and negative ways.

He was evidently dysfunctional, struggling with poor mental health and addiction, even if he would not have confessed to it.

He had rapidly declined in recent months, yet his passing was still so unexpected. It hits terribly close to home.

I mourn for him, and all that he lost; for those who cared for him and only wanted the best. My heart breaks for all the lives he impacted.

I truly did not anticipate the level of grief I feel.

It is days such as these where I cannot even be fuelled by the spite in my heart; it is days such as these which beg for clemency, for an end to the suffering.

There is so much.

I dare to dance with the greatest flaws and find myself wounded, and retain the audacity to be surprised.

I feel deeply disgusted.

I know better, I do; underneath the layers of carefully-applied falsehoods, does the raw reality fester, a sick mockery of humanity.