⚠ I walk around N u m b Frozen solid All the time It isn’t that There’s nothing here It’s just that Whenever A feeling starts To form I chuck it Right into That black hole That sits Right here Where it can’t hurt me Ever again

You said it would hurt YOU more than it hurt ME. I’ve been hurting for over 30 years. What about you?

⚠ “You went out there a boy and came back here a man” Only. I don’t feel like a man. I don’t feel human at all. I feel like something fundamental. Something sacred. Has died. Not in an instant. No. Slowly. Like it was strangled. Intimately. Drawn out. Savoured. All the while carving pieces out of my flesh. Until, by the end. I was more scar than man.

I walk around not whole incomplete knowing that were I to have it to give in cave in succumb that it would destroy me. So. Destruction or Incompleteness. Which one will it be this time?

No matter how small misshapen bad or impossibly angled I will fit anywhere you put me so long as it is somewhere where I can see you.

I don’t want to move on. I want to stay right here. To give in. Unchain that door and let it swing wide open. All the decay that has festered in there for eons spewing forth. A tidal wave of finely aged feculent wrath. I am tired of drowning in it. Of swallowing it every time it rises up. I want to open up and let it out. All of it. Every Last Drop. I want to feel empty after. True emptiness. Emptier than I ever had thought possible.

If you knew. What I knew. Then you, too. Would **** me like I do.

Today I awoke to a world of pain. A sensation that I am no stranger to. But that still catches me by surprise every time. My nervous system going haywire. Like lightning streaking across the night sky. Across every break. Every dislocation. Anything that took time to heal. Bright flashes that only I can see light up my eyes. Blinding me. A heat that only I can feel. My brain, having turned to goop, Threatens to leak out of my ear. The one that shrieks a little louder than the other. Chunks of broken glass in my knee. Popped corn in my lung. The numbed itchiness that spreads over my tingling appendages. The subtle, but constant taste of copper. Decay incarnate. Reminders of life lived badly. But lived all the same.

The ever-present unhinged part of me bleeds into the conversation. I see you notice the cracks. Slow at first. Then all the more quickly. As if each word served to hammer home the dawning realisation. Everything shifts. The comfort you once felt, evaporates. Replaced with nausea, fear and the intense desire to run. She sees what you are the voices tell me. I don’t want to believe them. But your sudden nervous demeanour makes it hard. I don’t blame you, you know. I would run too, If I could. Fuck knows I’ve tried. But I am stuck with this. And I am genuinely sorry. That I tried to stick you with this, too. You don’t have to worry. I know my place. I know where I belong. Back to my hole I go.