I still hear her voice. I still see her face in my dreams. Even in sleep I gain no reprieve. She calls to me, in every waking hour, from the darkest corner of my mind. From a place of razor blades and blood, hatred, pain and disillusion. From the abyss she reaches for me, forever wanting, waiting for my touch. Sometimes I succumb to her, I go to the places that, where lesser men tread, they find slow, rotting death.
I walk under the leaden cloak, I endure the endless hours of sleepless days. I grow strong in this hell, this lonesome plane of rage. I walk the streets she and I once walked, the places I broke her heart. I find myself without sleep when the night comes and my restless nature forces me to pace. I walk to her, from one end of the city to then next, again and again. The hours turn to days, I grow worn past exhaustion. Yet on I tread, forever searching for her touch.
In these torturous hours, the mind becomes white hot with rage, rage turns to pain, pain to sorrow. For years I have wept, now my face forgets the emotion. I show no sign of the hell that lurks within, my visage remains the stoic face I show the world. The tears still fall, the eyes still grow blood shot, but emotion is so familiar, I've lost the meaning in its expression. Sadness, the dissatisfaction of what is, the most important human experience, has lost all meaning to me.
I go from day to day, walking through the thick haze, brought on by the days and nights of insomnia. To say I feel lost is a poor choice in words. Crushed, decimated, raped, burnt, torn asunder, rent limb from limb, disemboweled and quartered, find more meaning to me, words I know carry deadly definition. The times I've felt the razor test its blade, been only a quick jerk away from the abyss, I've forgotten their number. I've dwelt in the battlefield of depression and loss for so long, I've become more akin to a wounded soldier than a saddened man.
Grandfathers, grandmothers, closest friends, loved ones alike. Most I don't recall if my hardened manner drove away or death took. They say blood runs thicker than water, the ideal that one will always have greater love their kin, has yet to find its place in my life. There was one, than another and another, I watched as I build these walls that keep the world at bay. I've grown more akin animal than man, the need to rend and tear is a constant reminder, daily, that I am a beast. I have shaped a monster from the boy that came, bright eyed and bawling into this world.
The internal dialogue, behind the patient tone and cultivated manner I keep, is a savage betrayal of the life I lead. The impulse to reach out and squeeze the life from