Desolate

I walk among the living. I eat, I breathe, I work. I put on a face for the world to see, but a façade is all it is. The darkness grows inside my head, and fills in the emptiness inside my heart. Something is moving in the shadows within, it reaches out to grab my soul. I’m frightened of the thing that stirs, that nags and harasses and vies for control. I don’t want to look at it. I don’t want to accept it, but it is here. I close my eyes, but it is here, standing right before me. I cannot do a thing. It stares me down and reduces me to nothing. I try not to look. I try so hard but my eyes are drawn to his.

 

What I see… What I see is murder.

 

Dear God, it wants to kill me. It wants me dead and won’t leave until it’s done. It grabs me by the head and forces me to look. I see the face. I see it… and it is me. I want to run, I try to escape, but it’s always there. I grasp at what’s around me and find my hands on poison. I gulp it down to drown the pain and the visage fades away. I try not to think about it. I try to forget that it’s there, but it’s never gone. It just sinks back into the shadows, waiting to rise again.

 

The anguish felt when its hands are about me has faded in the weeping. I’m left a shell in a shallow pit, cold and damp and pitiful. I reach out to feel the touch of another, to feel anything at all, but not a thing. I crawl about in darkness, my hand outstretched. To feel...to feel a glimmer of life, to feel a spark that lets me know there is life worth living. But there is nothing, always nothing. I am alone. In darkness is my home.

 

I walk among the living, but death is nearer to me.