Oyasumi, Punpun

& i am a disgusting, heaving mass of viscera—

gore and agony, a wound beyond wounds.

a smear of suffering so deeply human it inverts, and can only be called inhumane.

i do not know how to name this pain.

i do not know how to wrap my head around it.

the memory is like a dream half-forgotten, dissolving as i wake to a vice-grip stealing the air from my lungs.

the recollection of hope, strangled by a hand that screams:

“THIS IS HOW THINGS ARE.”

and shatters me.

a thousand deaths, an eternity of grief, loss personified—

the price i pay for daring, for dreaming, for wanting and pursuing a path the gods deemed “not for me.”

a lifetime of punishment.

the sorry skin I wear, pretending to be someone.

playing at somebody, a person with a name, and not a pit of suffering.

I bleed. It feels fake, too.

False hope, wishing wells in the palm of a monkey’s paw—

this coffin for two, this eternal dream.

these sunflowers,