I am underwater. 

Drowning

in the treacherous waves that consume

me and flood my lungs until they burst.

Darkness

engulfs my soul and swallows

whole all the color inside of me.

Darkness.  

There is no escape.

There never

will be an escape.

 

Because nothing

nothing

 nothing will ever be enough.

Everything:

Wrong.

All wrong.

I can’t

it won’t

nothing ever does

never will

change.

 

But why me?

Why am I the one

plagued

with the devil

on my back while everyone

everyone

everyone else is happy?

 I long to change

yet these thoughts continue to hiss

in the back of my mind: the flickering tongues of flames

burning a house down to ashes.

The damage is done.

A house is not rebuilt from its ashes. No,

the ashes are waste

cleared from the site of the inferno

to make room for something better.

The blaze dies down.

I am consumed by darkness.

 

 

Shattered.

The silent still of the eternal ebony is pierced

by the relentless warfare  

pursued by those who mean the most.

“Come back!” I plead.

Come back to happier days:

a state of bliss

sees a pigtailed young girl

flanked by her loving parents,

divided by nothing more than the hands of their little daughter.

Torn

now into a million pieces.

Those whom I have always relied on:

fodder for the flames.

But how

how

how can I be so selfish

as to permeate their uneasy minds

with the dismal product of my own? I can’t

I won’t

be another cause of their troubles

of anyone’s troubles.

No more troubles.

There is finally an escape.

 

My hands are shaking.

The ink is fresh on the paper.

There is a glimmer of light on the metal.

I see my own reflection.

One drop hits the floor.

Two.

Three.

I lose count.

The flame:

extinguished.