It is, I believe, the most difficult thing to perceive.

An expression of sadness.

Grief so great, one can’t help but let it out.

Poems and songs of heartbreak,

Murals of guilt and ever consuming remorse,

Songs of dreams only glimpsed. Realized, but for a mere moment.

Are we not fragile then?

To be so weak, to need to spread the sadness that burdens us so,

Or are we not strong?

To carry great scars and greater memories,

Yet still to move on,

Our hearts pumping with blistering might,

Ready once again to fight the battles it has lost.

So, as I watch, you let out your sigh of exhaustion

Your eyes watching the stars,

Wishing you were among them.

The moonlight lightens your tired face.

The distance between us, tiny. So why do I feel so far away?

Alas, the world is unfair.

And perhaps we are destined to suffer so near one another, but never to meet.

I’ve gotten over you

Memories of your flesh on mine like specks of star dust at the tip of my fingers.

The places you would kiss and hold me.

Have you found your replacement yet?

A new canvas to paint on?

A new piece of clay to mold to your liking?

Is that all I was?

Or were the moments we shared real?

So here I’ll wait, in Purgatory

Because what we had is dead now,

A permanent eclipse of emotions.

I can’t tell if I miss or despise you.

How have I moved on when I still think about you?

How can I move on when the marks of love you left on my flesh still persist?

How can I move on when your memory is still a fresh imprint on my lips?

How can I so easily learn to hate,

The one that taught me to love?

And still I try to decide on sleepless nights,

Were the moments we had real?

The greatest tragedies are about those left behind.

The saddest tales are of the aftermath.

The most painful burden to carry is to keep going on.

To move and shift focus.

The burn of unanswered questions and empty conversations.

To move on even if there is no end.

And such is human life,

Of those on this mortal plane.

A condition of no future,

A path of eternal destruction and rebuilding.

A condition of wretched survival.

To see no light,

No relief and no rest

But to continue on this tireless path.

To crawl through hell and back, even if there is nothing to crawl back to.

I’d talk for days at a time.

Spinning webs of fables.

All connected,

Beginning to end.

And each sentence would be perfectly crafted.

I would give speeches and sermons.

And as I’d look up,

I’d find myself alone.

Talking to an echoing void.

My voice carried in that ceaseless night to no end;

To fall on no ears.

Rock walls and thunderstorms,

Crushing waves and screaming wind.

It all still feels so empty.

Like a permanent cowl

Shrouding my vision.

This world is pale and uninteresting.

Vapid and boring.

And everyone is stuck here together.

And compassion is an act long forgotten,

These blank faces would not know a confession if it was looking them in the eyes.

They simply can’t find it in them

To care.

And I am no different,

Becoming an empty cog

In this machine I loathe.

And we’re all sinners here

Empty and depraved.

It’s not always their fault,

Not everyone is themselves the reason they are broken.

But even Hell is full of men who only ever made

One mistake.

It was as if the world had failed.

It was gone in a moment,

But it took with it all joy.

Only dread and despair were real for a mere moment.

Tried and tested,

No journey is adequate.

No training is ample.

And a great air of crushing defeat covered the oceans themselves.

And it was a tear that fell,

On the floor.

How powerful,

Must tears be.

To be as the ocean.

It was as if the earth held such great sadness,

It passed it onto man.

And

It can do nothing but watch helplessly.

As its children walk with its own flaws.

How tragic,

For a mother to watch her children bear scars of battles they never fought.

But as a mother does,

She must fight on.

She must persist and hope,

She teaches better than her own mother did.

So her children

May not pass on more scars.

It was a tear that fell,

It was the eyes it fell from that hurt me so.

Was it even supposed to?

Was it meant to?

Was it worth it,

Being this sensitive?

I do not wish to carry these scars anymore.

They do not fit my skin.

Those fragmented lips,

They’re gone now, almost.

I do not remember your smell,

The way you’d turn around when I called your name.

Our time together slipped through my fingers like sand,

And now I find myself buried in it.

Locked out of the world in my own coffin of dust.

I do not remember how we’d dance together,

Counting the stars that rest above us,

Nestled into nebulas so very far away from us.

I do not remember what your laugh sounds like anymore.

Is this really what I wished for?

To forget this part of my life?

To forget you and all we did together?

It is a curse to remember,

A sin to forget.

And I lack the strength to tell you.

I’m afraid that this too, will fall on uninterested ears.

That it, like so many questions before it, will be laid to rest, never to be remembered.

Was I one of those questions for you?

To be heard and forgotten?

To never be paid a second thought,

A modicum of attention?

Perhaps I was.

But your silence,

The one you answered me with,

Filled this lonely abyss I called my life.

It was my fault.

It was I, after all, who mistook silence for approval.

Twisted and bent is my view of this world

I see monsters.

Each face is a fragment,

To be studied and discarded.

That is, the price.

I further lose touch with this reality

I look in mirrors,

Not in vain,

But to remind myself

That I exist.

That this corrupt psyche

Has indeed, physical form.

My broken lens,

Clouded by hatred and anger,

Now blinds me.

At first I saw this world through rage.

Now I see nothing but scorn.

Flaws.

Reflections of my past.

Consequences of my mistakes.

I wish to see again.

To see how beautiful the sky is.

How beautiful life is.

Humanity and the perpetual struggle.

The beauty of our minds and skin.

Of scars and stories.

Of this world.

Instead,

I feel nothing but disgust.

I see brands, not scars.

Permanent reminders of those I did wrong.

I see mistakes and imperfections.

I see what I have done.

What have I become.

I do not feel anymore.

It’s numbing.

And to not feel, is to not be human.

To be born is to be a man.

But to have a soul, is to be human.

I gaze in mirrors and do not recognize what stares back.

I gaze inwards and see nothing.

I have become the unwanting emissary of anger.

Stuck in a twilight of realities.

Stuck between the path I have chosen and the past I have woven.

I wish to be far away.

This house reeks of my failures.

This body burns with my sins.

They say you die twice in this world,

But who will remember the man who died each moment he was alive?

So once again,

I sit in solitude.

Closed are the gates to this godforsaken town.

Buried in dust and the ash of my past.

No longer will the venom flow.

Decay, burn and rave in my iron tomb.

So once again,

I sit on this decrepit throne of thorns.

Once again, its iron teeth dig into my flesh.

This seat of malice and rage.

Only born to consume.

I despise what has happened.

I grow tired of what is happening and frightful of what is to happen.

Yet once again,

I will crown myself.

I know that I must.

Neither a good choice, nor a noble one.

It is but the path I must walk again.

As I swore.

Blister and burn

On this path of burning corpses.

Smoldering fires and floating ash.

So once again,

I sit in my fallen kingdom.

My castle of iron and rot,

Seeps into me.

The iron teeth grind and twist.

They contort and crush.

But I swore.

So once again,

The rot consumes.

The teeth bite.

Closed are these ungodly gates in the land of ghosts.

In the kingdom of perpetual rain.

Where the madman who calls himself a fool lives.

All you will hear are cries and laughter,

All in agony.

The rain can wash away your tears,

But can it wash away the eyes that bleed them?