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In the stillroom of my skull

Thoughts drip like morphine

One pale drop at a time

There is no scream here

Only the hum of static blood

Circling, circling

Too weary to flee the heart

I have forgotten how to ache

Even grief has grown sterile

Folded in white linen and silence

My veins no longer carry desire

Only the slow procession of memory

Fading under cold, fluorescent skies

The world moves somewhere above

But I remain

Suspended beneath the weight of my own name

Solitude is not absence

It is a presence too vast to endure

It presses against the ribs

Like water against glass

Waiting for the final crack

Once I begged for release

Now I only listen

To the slow psalm of nothingness

Coursing through my catatonic veins

There is peace in paralysis

A kind of cruel mercy

Where even suffering forgets

Who it was meant to wound