Hollow Bones

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Nothing.
Why is it that I feel nothing?
1st place, nothing
3rd place, nothing
Last choice, nothing
53%, nothing
Avoided, nothing
Clinging on, nothing
Left, nothing
Together, nothing
Apart, nothing

Everything feels like nothing.

Perhaps, I have spent so much of my life forcing myself to run away from my feelings that now I no longer have the ability because this habit is engraved into my very bones.
I let down my guard for a second, I fall asleep, a certain smell, or touch. It floods everything. I build the dam back up and then I start thinking.

That's dangerous

I stop to try and force myself to feel something. I feel forgotten. I feel isolated. I feel unwanted. I feel them next to me and resist the urge to reach out and touch them.

(are they even real?)

I watch them breathe and feel them move but they are a thousand miles away. Act like it doesn't bother me.
Im alone, I'm spinning out of control trying to find them in the forest and I see red. They laugh and talk and live and love; they do all the things I can't. I'm sitting, trying to force something out of my head, out of my mouth. Clawing at my throat.

Get out
Get out

Once my fingernails are covered in blood, an opening created to let the words escape, I smile, pleased with myself. The single sentence floats out in the air, free to spread its wings and fly out of my body. But they don't notice, they don't care. They continue with their own conversations, as if I am a ghost that doesn't even exist. I fall silent and sit in submission, waiting to be spoken to. (I don't speak)
They don't know.
I'm hunted, a fish hook tearing through my ribcage as I'm hauled to the surface. Smoke. Stubble. ("Talk to me.") Frozen in place until I'm released. Stiff movements, shake it off. It never happened.

Don't tell them

Who would listen if I did?

Nobody cares

So I've learned.




A glitch. A perfect representation of how I feel, destroyed, taken away with the black screen.

Start over

It's never quite there. I can't make up for it.

Give up

Okay.

~S~

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