to be impressionable and exhausted.

i should have read the cracks in your unsmiling face and seen the unmoving sneer like a jackboot to the temple.

some days make my eyes sweat at night.

lying awake to see reflections off the flickering unlightedness of your radiance.

i want to recapture these feelings i'm losing one after the other as they stagnate from memory.

i burst.

i am numbed to what i should be clutching to me.all my might goes into reserving all my might for my return home. i back away only to be cornered as a collateral target.

auxillary convenience.

i want to feel special.

to feel alive again.

breathe freely again.

for my legs to walk those unfamiliar streets with confidence and clarity and meaning.

i want meaning.

this is not unique, but restatement of the obvious becomes the norm when you've been stripped of that which allows you to function.

breathe.

feel.

i'm dry. the chalkiness of my eyes and the clamminess of my skin bespeak my inhumanity.

today i lashed out at nothing and came back with nothing. i need to be removed like a festering bulging tumor and cleaned and served to someone hungry for infection. my mind has been thought raw and this is the exposed dermis.

this is when i settle down.

this is what i sleep upon.

these are my sleeping hands, clutching at the fading fabric of thought exposed.