---

Oh, I'm writhing with life!

The sharp edges dulled

The first touch of mercy swings down on me

Like the last ragged breath that slips away

But oh, I'm seething with joy!

Slow shaking steps toward a fluorescent new day

Their welcoming embrace...

Laughter spills from my lips like the ash from a shattered urn

I'm patient zero, event horizon; the eternal undertow

Point my ravenous love

towards whom you want to be swallowed

Draw wretched eclipse closed

The incessant numb twilight of a shattered mind

Do you feel nothing, like me?

I welcome you to join me in this idiosyncrasy;

the absence of all-

But oh, I'm burning with love!

Collapsing within

With the weight of the unachieved

I welcome you to grieve

Oh! The incessant grip of our encirclement;

convulsing and euphoric as it singularly tightens!

And the air is colder than it's ever been

I know nothing of it

There are voices crying in the other rooms

I don't hear them...

And in the recesses where the darkness deepens

That which I can't possibly see

Something has brought its gaze towards us...

Putrefying where we stand

like effigies to a decaying opiate god

Pestilential and bloated with life

The absence of all

The embrace of rot

Blossoming before me

Iridescent and beautiful

So unspeakably beautiful

As a crippled vessel, exposed in all its grand failure,

reaching for you...