There was a time, not long ago,
each day I had to check
if my soul was housed in me
or abandoned this mortal wreck

My innards doused in darkness
a numbness head to toe;
life itself lacked luster
I knew not where to go

Despite this core confusion
I knew I had a spirit;
but I had sadly acquiesced
in my inability to hear it

For, you see, this darkness
which shrouded all my limbs
was not paired with silence:
its oft-conjoined twin

Instead, my night, my confidant,
my misery-inducing friend,
was accompanied with a cacophony
of blaring shrieks which would not end

This stewing cauldron of my mind
brewed bubbles that howled and blared
these boiling musings filling me
with self-pitying hot air

Sloshing sloppily inside my scalp
a screaming soup of ruminations;
its liquid drowned my tender thoughts
squandering inner-lumination

With my reeling repetitions
I felt more useless than the dead
because, l believed:
“At least spoiled flesh
nourishes the soil in its stead!”

My deepest regrets on repeat:
the thoughts of things unsaid,
the lovers lost,
the heartaches felt,
since I screwed it up again

A record-player skipping
scratching questions to no end;
asking:
“Who should I be?”
“Why is this me?”
“When did I choose this Misery for my friend?”

For oh so long this was my hell
adrift within my night
I could not tell up from down
no guiding source of light

Any strategy that I could see
for finding my salvation
was squandered by shrieking reprises
of self-flagellation

Eventually I knew
I could not take this anymore
“I’d rather feed the worms and plants
than put up with these roars!”

But then before I violently
silenced the cackling chorus
I sighed: “What else am I to lose?”
so I verbalized my horrors

I had not done this act before
I never had the gall
for what tumbled out my mouth that day
were my scariest truths of all

I’d told others of my sadnesses
of my unending woes;
but I had not told them
of the Me
I abandoned long ago

My dreams unmanifested,
the desires too far to reach;
so when I freed this part of me
I prepared to hear a screech

There I sat, bracing myself
for the hellish sound to come;
instead
I heard a steady thump
resembling a drum