I’ve been left like a playing card taped to the back wheel of a bike:
Worn and thrown in the discard pile, no longer worthy of being allowed to play in the game.

The things that used to bring color to my world are no longer stark,
they’ve been diluted down to watercolor paint spread across a mile of uncertainty and hurt.

I feel like the dusty book on the shelf mom used to read to me but I grew out of:
left to decompose in the stomachs of the moths biting away at my pages.
waking up every morning feeling the same isn’t enough anymore,
leaving the house only to feel like an artifact in a museum isn’t living.
I’m ogled at from behind glass, flashes of who I want to be reflecting back in my eyes.
and when I close my eyes at night, I only see distorted, sordid smiles...
reality recorded and thrown back in my face to torment my dreams,

the only place I’ve ever been able to find peace.

I can’t find the meaning of being anymore.

1. a : having life
b : active, functioning living languages
2 a : exhibiting the life or motion of nature : natural

throw a dictionary at me,

point at the words with shaking hands,

scream at me with volcanic ash pouring from your lungs to attempt to make me understand...
I couldn’t tell you what it feels like.
I couldn’t tell you what it means.
I can’t point at pictures and say, “Maybe that’s what it’s like. Am I right?...”
No,
life isn’t looking out the window on a rainy day,

listening to a meaningful song and having philosophical moments of endearment...
No,
Life isn’t sitting at the table with mom, granny and grandpa and eating burnt papa john's pizza,
It isn’t reminiscing,

and feeling your heart swell when you see it play out in slow motion in your head…

No,
It’s only their empty warped laughs,

captured in a fold of time that’s indescribable...
it’s only crying in the darkness,
wanting to go back so badly because the present is too much to bear.
I’ve been whisked away into a mixture and left with a sour taste...
And its burnt my tongue to the point of being incapable of speech...
I can't tell you why I should be here,

why the cold water doesn’t make me shiver anymore,

but instead gives me a sense of what nonexistence might feel like.
I can’t tell you that I’d regret sleeping endlessly.

1.    a : a permanent cessation of all vital (see vital 2a) functions : the end of life.