Lifeless: time and a feeling that lead me in attempts to excavate myself. It became an effort to expose the innermost depths of myself; to dig away the coverings. I imagined one day I would be able to carefully serrate the edges of my being, the outer coverings of my body, and be able to peel away the flesh, pin it back like a tarp…stretched open by pins and needles, on display like a cadaver ready for dissection. Why must a human be dead before exploring those parts…life not cease just long enough to put ones innermost out on display, to photograph it for later examination, for a chance at further understanding? Why can I not clear the way like a path for you to crawl down into bringing food for my soul and jumper cables for a heart I believe is only beating backwards in fear. Why must the operatives be concealed so deeply that I feel…feel a breaking heart and choking lungs, yet will never be able to watch it break, or them being suffocated? We can look at our bodies to tell us the proper way to don a disguise. Flesh stretches over what makes us who we are, just like we draw the blinds to separate our lives from theirs. I should find an ocean of black tar and drop the most beautiful creature into its waters while it convulses, its life seeping out. I feel that would be an art form best able to depict the path my heart is taking. I feel myself sink, unsure of what into. A chunk of flesh, sadistically pulsating just to stay alive…alive while ground between merciless jaws…beating its way through that moment in some desperate effort to believe that one day…one day…it will pulsate its way through a happy moment…a reason to have endured…
…but that hope is diminishing ever so quickly. When I closed my eyes against you I believed there was a glimmer at the end of a tunnel. Your arms felt like bandages about me…me, feeling like skinless nerves, a massive wound needing protection. Bandages wear off. My eyes had to open and the light was gone. The world is infectious, and I am alone. Your breath blew the fire from my oil lamp, hiding from view the passageway towards the switch I must believe is there…the one that I will one day learn to turn back on, myself, without sputtering out from misconnected wires, leaving me with only a fleeting moment of happiness.