Fissures line up two-by-two, seething red faces disguised under a mask that smiles like a false sun lighting up a room.  Sluggishly stomping up fingertips toes, the one part of a body that goes unnoticed for days, they start encampments along every minor crevice they can seek out.  Four become eight and eight become sixteen hundred, until red clefts blanket soft skin, now a desert in the heat of disdain.
    Now the eyes, the white becoming slightly pink as the first marches out, pickaxe in his hand as a scepter for a king.  Observing the transformation in a mirror, fingers widen the weeping skin, exposing the eggshell iris.  The pupil contracts in sudden amazement, closely hinting at the flickers of fear, it breaks as the glass shatters, unable to view the rose beneath the beast.
    This beast…Where the rose has been lost to all that is wrong in this world because something--someone forgot to lock the door.

What have I done?

    Sometimes, when the moon is hidden behind a veil in shame, I wonder why I’m still here.  There’s a notebook in the closet attesting to all the lies, along with a folder full of false pretenses, splintered by the truth.
    That’s why I lay beneath the ceiling of undeniable sin, questioning gods that don’t exist and interrogating the angels that never cease their silence.  And I run out of words to describe the feelings inside, running off with sentences that don’t make any bit of sense until…I run out of breath.  Then I sit up, gasping for air, hoping that maybe somebody will come and hand me a chance to go back to what I once was.
    Because I lay, frac-tured.

I’m lost to myself.

    I’ve read a thousand or so books, trying to see if there’s another soul like mine, bound by the confines of the world, chained to the wall like that man in cell twenty-four.  That one man who killed himself but lived because the world just wouldn’t let Go.
    There’s no answer to the question that I’m singing in my sleep, shouting down the sidewalk, and preaching in the playground.  I’ll never find an answer to Life, not while I’m alive and can’t find myself through this haze, this cloud.  Darker, deeper, and akin to oblivion, the hole keeps going until it’s taken your heart, and, finally, your soul drifts away into the sea.
    And so I’ve learned to say Goodbye.

So long.

    Limbs quake and the mind shivers at the thoughts streaming down, where they were born is anyone’s guess but mine.  I hardly know the ways of the world, and I doubt that I shall learn any time soon.  I’m just a kid without a name in the school of the damned, waiting for the hall monitor to find me behind the lockers.
    Young lovers are whisked away by Death’s daily bread, hearts torn in two by the loss at his hand.  She’ll cry until her body runs out of tears, watching as he’s buried six feet under the sun.  No light can penetrate the sinister fog of depression, where the bones turn to ash and the heart fails to beat.
    I watch as she withers away, like a young tulip that’s dwelling in the desert of loss, slowly turning into a corpse that still stands upright.  Her friends don’t seem to see the falling petals that are her eyes, and the straws clutching at the place her heart should be.  Two weeks will pass and I’ll see her buried too, six feet under the moon.
    Because, in the night, no one can hear you crying yourself into a restless sleep plagued by the thoughts of the guilty.  In the night, no one can hear you screaming at your god, asking all the questions that you’ll never have answers to.
    In the night…

There’s no escape.

    And I pick up my pen in silent salute to all those strong enough to live on in faith, for I have none left to spare.  Red ink in remembrance of the fallen, those who sit and watch over your shoulder while you try desperately to remember their names.  They’re a choir of specters hissing out curses to the weapon that dare take them away.
    There’s no poem that you can think up to describe their pain, so how can you take that pity without at least shivering in discomfort.  There’s a mob breathing down your neck, transparent hands trying to snatch your heart away from your undeserving body.  Wailing ensues and torment follows, for the first glimpse of Death is the last thing you want to see.  Panicking, you’ll hand back the box, regretting that you ever even laid a glance to the one thing you thought would help.
    The ironic thing is, Pity never really helps, it’s only this cursed, solitary reminder of the events in your past.  Remember, the ones that keep you awake at night, writing out those disgusting words that should never have been invented.
    Don’t you presume to qualify for that.
    Don’t you ever think you’re worthy.
    When you are, the church bells are ringing, and I’ll be huddled in the corner with my pen in hand, a little Ghost Writer without a reason to live.

A real Pity, that is.

    Thorns decorating the despairing rose, the gardener gazes on it with a sorrowful gaze, regretting the decision to ever start this ambitious endeavor.  He’ll walk away with a calloused hand to his head, not crying for those who wouldn’t try for themselves.  He can’t force feed knowledge down the throats of the selfishly deaf, nor trim the thorns when the ego expands.
    With all that’s occurring, he always forgets, the little rose in the back harbored from winds, but tortured by neglect.  The leaves are beginning to curl as the rain never comes, and the petals dry in the drought of disaster.  A little while in the future, the rose will be unrecognizable, just another weed to toss in the bin.
    The mirror in the bathroom can not endure such a revolting setting, so the fissures line up two-by-two, seething red faces disguised under a mask that smiles like a false sun lighting up a room.  Four become eight and eight become sixteen hundred, crackling the glass as fireworks skewer the air.  One piece falls, followed by another, until the only part left is a tiny fragment of the beautiful reflector.
    In the bedroom, the shattering receives no attention, for the body lies, almost in state, under a ceiling of sin and innumerable lies.  It is then that I realize, with eyes half closed, that the rose is still alive, just harder to find and eternally scarred.  This beast is only here because I forgot to lock the door, and now the rose in the garden is going to wait for the key to be found.  That’s when the tears cascade down, forming a river to nowhere, because the key was buried feet under the sun, and the heart lies under the moon.

    And I lay, fractured.

For you.