In the dark.

What would the world look like with the absence of my presence? My existence already feels erased… for what is existence but the emotional consciousness of oneself? And if that part of me is dead—do I cease to exist entirely?

My teeth and lungs are coated from the cigarettes I chainsmoked by the hands of friends and front-porch steps, I am dwindling in my ability to breathe, as I dwindle in my ability to love. Lovelessness has pervaded my mind the past several weeks. I find myself with fingertips on secrets, lips on the thoughts of lovers, and smoke on the breath of my suicidal exhalations. The love that I have salvaged for myself is as dead as the days of my past. Long gone and irretrievable. My chest is bloodied and bruised with the intimate poking of my truest self. What is this person that hides themselves? With ink and pristine needles piercing each part of their body as if it could pinpoint—perhaps pin down—their existence to a definitive moment. I live in infamy as blood lives within me. Incapable of expelling one without losing the other. The darkness is not beside but within… and I embrace it with all I am.

Three and a half months sober—but none the wiser. I can feel my soul yearning for some substance to extricate me from my current world. I can feel my comrades shielding their eyes as I become an entity ablaze.

Oh, won’t somebody torch these ways?

I find myself again, in my car, alone. 
I find myself again, on the road, alone. 
I find myself again, with the trees, alone. 
I know nothing but alone. I know no one but my phone. 
I know—not myself—but alone. 

Take away any cultural expectations. Put to rest the ideas of community and religious institutions damning each soul with a shackle of purpose in place of peace—this place is freedom. Aloneness.

I am emotionless as I write this. I could dispel the darkest wanderings of my mind… the fragmented ideals I have over what family and friends and lovers are supposed to be. The framework of my youth having conditioned myself to wedge a fortress between my true self and the connections with fellow earth dwellers. I could explain how I’ve never known closeness, never known truth—without fingers crossed, a bag packed, and a foot out the door. I could reveal how emotions flow through me like the wind does my hair—but what good would that do?—and how they appear as quickly as they disappear. I am emotionless, in the dark. There is nothing / I am nothing.

I torch my soul as I torch these words—into the digital atmosphere, smoke signaling: trouble is near. I bow my head as the knife breaks skin, never to be the same again.