I Don't Know Who I Am

[ry0un0suke]

. . .
. . .Carried off one evening from the city's outskirts and unseen for a time to follow. Days, maybe a few short weeks confined to a bed. The will to rise died and they sank further into the covers. Uneasy, uncertain, unmotivated to continue. Writing, loved, abandoned. Each written word drawing a vile, violent disgust. Painful to write, to hold a pen, to read, to move, to live- so they don't. For a time, perhaps it was only just a few days, they lost track of how time moved or if it moved at all, Sunsets over Moonlight did not leave their home. They stopped crying finally, too spent, and what remained was carved out, hollow, miserable. Food untouched, door unopened, their growling stomach ignored, their parched, dry, sore throat disregarded. First under the covers, then without them, then lying on their side, their stomach and staring up at the ceiling for minutes, minutes, minutes, minutes... A yearning to move was killed by fear that movement meant dying, and reaching meant dying, that speaking meant the eyes of those claimed dear would destroy them in an instance. Crumpled into nothing, meaning nothing, these spiraling, dangerous thoughts turned cruel master with iron chain and low temper. They cannot contemplate whether it is better to die or disappear or both or neither or suffer or thrive, but thriving is frightening because this is all they've known, no? Cruel, baked instances warped by broken perspective forever a part of their nature. Who, then, would love someone who cannot find the will to love themself? They are trying, sort of, maybe. It is why, at some point, their bag disheveled beside their bag lost its journal, and in the dark, slow, messy, without care for structure, diction, meaning, story, intent, feeling, they scribbled an intelligent mess. Wallowing, nothing new. Nothing to note. Nothing to see. Nothing to feel nor share to reach nor touch as none of it is real. Made up, conjured, figments, or truth real and felt earnest and deep in their being, an inseparable part of what makes them, them and they hate it, but to hate it is to hate Her and to Her, dearest mother, they weep wishing they were different, better, normal, model, famous, acclaimed, pretty, worthy, someone different than who they are now because who, in their right mind, would look upon this mess and think anything higher? They are trying and their best is not good enough and their worst deserves nothing. Ancient deaths haunt them, recent deaths unhealed. Laugh, laugh! Mock and berate the failed royal and healer and writer and author and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and.. and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and.. and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and.. and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and... if any looked, just maybe, they may find courage. Path dark with no light at the end, until then, they rot, curled up in the dark, starving, scared, lacking voice to scream for help while pining for it in wait to refuse. . .

. . .

Late into the evening, love and hate parade the streets. Streamers and lights and shouts and embraces and anguish built up like boiling pressure. Throughout the path it pops like cheers, roars in celebration and mourning. Held high on flat carts, the twisting, naked, frail and bony desecrated body. Limp, impaled at the joints, strings of yellow and purple drip down from the punctures in holy matrimony of man and self. The beauty in living's sickness, the excitement riled like rising blisters in the throat it beckons an empty bile as the cart rolls on. Thrown up as burning laughs, a mockery on the bareness of men who wish to keep hidden. Twitching, writhing in realized agony and life still lived rather than lost, the vane, pleading motions like a hypnotizing dance by the way bony hips sway and thighs rub and knees buckle and toes curl and digits tight and tight and tight and tight- body unbreathing yet breathless and full, the deflated lungs gasping desperate for an audience of eyes only theirs.

 

Helpless in the crowd, the cheers born from staked, static men stripped and bare. All bleed a wicked or earnest hue from the paled nails and stakes pinning them upright and in place. How the strings twist and curl and pool at the stone, filling the cracks like spiraling veins- many orange, pink, yellow- like the gleaming, gorgeous sunset, followed by white, navy, indigo, the sincerity of bright moonlight. Together, at the parade's center figure, into a massive, consuming inky black that bubbles, boils and rots. Steam so hot it felt biting and cold. The figure sinks, flesh eaten by its own pooling, black blood. It digs through skin, pulled taut until ripped, stripping it down to exposed, soft fat that wheezes underneath the pressure, muscle lean clawed into ribbons and holes, while the bone, strong and exposed, corroded into hollow vessels- left, then, with strings of veiny mana dying without battle nor honor, dimmed.