I am losing my mind in the depths of my screams

Alone, I walk the halls

Empty faces stare back

.Smiling.

The whispers of my steps disappear before me

It is only one foot in front of the other

Right?

It is not enough

 

One foot.

One echo.

One person desperate to be heard in a world too loud to care.

The imitation of heels clicking

Lips smacking

Foreheads crinkling

Wrinkling

Sprinkling the dust of its age on the fallen relics of youth

Only one foot.

 

This is the one time I am messing up my words

Tripping over my breaths

Trying

Waiting

Screaming

For you to say something to me with a voice that cannot remember how to work anymore

Say something.

Don’t just push your fingers into the recesses of a heart you do not want to know really exists

Don’t just let me fall away

I cannot believe that I deserve to have my bones ripped apart

My muscles unwound

And shoved into your mouth.

 

I cut myself with three knives

While two eyes

Watch the bleeding of one place

I never knew existed.

 

Maybe, even while I am slitting my throat with my own words --

Maybe I can hold on

Maybe the shivers will halt

Maybe my lungs will stop choking on the chances I never took

The words I never spoke

The ghosts whose names I never learned

 

No

 

I am regretting the thousand steps I took in the wrong direction

I am tripping over the bodies in front of me

I have been believing in something far too distant

For far too long.

 

Fake smiles and

Fake laughs and

Fake promises from illustrations that were never animated

 

I am breathing in a fairy tale

 

Brightened faces and vacated stares

Staring, staring, staring back at me

One thousand eyes gouged out

Rolling at my feet

And I keep

Keep

Keep

Walking

 

(Are we okay?)