There is no one here.

It's quiet here, but not soft or dim. The air crawling into the crevices of my lungs feels damp, and salty. The clouds above are black, filtering the sunlight to shadow; though the air is warm, an echo of the sun of a time gone by. The wind blows strongly but without sound, how is that?

There's no one here. 

A flash of light over the sea. And then a mumbling, rumbling. A growing, growling, groaning, shaking the ground sort of sound. And then it goes again. The tide goes out, on a chain pulled by the ocean's claws. Is this the last time it will recede? Has the last of the ocean's waves waved?

This is my mind. And there is no one here. Or are you?

JE NE SAIS PAS, an old notebook, WHERE is time? Incoherence.

A swamp of thick sludge and weeds, 

shadowed in confusion, and, *greed? 

Blood that doesn't bleed,

tears stuck in my throat.

Where is this message I can neither hear nor heed?

And who constructed this bridge-less moat?

Sometimes it feels to be all pretense,

though these moments are infinite between the times of relent.

Why can I not articulate this reality?

Where is the clarity in this insanity?

*need?

CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?

Because I cannot hear myself.

Silence. A disclaimer.

My smile is real.

My laugh is sincere.

When I say I am alright I speak the truth.

Though I could not even say what truth means.

When was that switch flipped?

From being a matter of surviving months to a matter of surviving hours?