the flatline project

ii. darkness

ii. darkness

someone is trying to reach me.

but I can't

I can't

I can't

let them know that I can hear them.

I need them to think I can't be reached.

because I really can't.

I'm gone. I'm gone and I'm never coming back. I can't come back. 

they won't let me. they won't ever let me come back again. I don't want to come back.

I'm fine,

I say.

smile

is what I do.

I hide the scars and the blood and the emptiness because if they knew they would make it worse.

they're the ones driving me to do this, but they can't know their hits leave bruises and their cuts leave scars and their words leave shards of glass under my skin.

they can't know that I'm counting down the days until I take my last breath.

they can't know

that I want to die

even though they tell me to take my life every single day.

but there is this thing

this thing that I can hear

this voice in my ear that sounds different from all the voices I am used to hearing.

I can't

won't

acknowledge the thing trying to get my attention.

because if I do there is no going back.

I will break them and they will break me.

It's bound to happen.

I can't let them past my walls of steel because I know they won't like what's on the other side.

I know.

I am certain of this.

certain that my skin is made of something lethal and my breaths are laced with poison and my blood is fire and ice and burning burning burning out of control.

I can't

won't

allow myself to be touched

and brought down on the false hope that there is a chance

a chance

a chance that I can breathe and feel and live normally again.

a chance that there is, indeed, a light at the end of the gloomy endless desolate tunnel that I find myself trapped in.

caged in.

bound by the lies and the whispers and the monsters gripping grasping clutching my hands.

I always run my tethered hands along the cold wet icy stone walls feeling for cracks for air for a way out of the nightmare that I live in.

but there is nothing.

nothing

I can do

to unbind my hands

and nurse my broken bones and flesh back to life.