Silenced Mouths, Dark Minds

The Note

This is unrevised and unedited. Everything I wrote in the note was done under the influence of prescription drugs. They did not give me a high and I was not addicted, but they did significantly change my mood. Yet, I kept taking them because they were supposed to help, right?

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I stand, decrepit and alone. I close the door and the final ray of light disappears into darkness. Perhaps a presage of my life. Love, God, Happiness. I ruminate about these three things as I contemplate collapsing to the comfort of lead in my mind. Love. Where does love secret itself? Through family? I speak a different language and they have retired from their book of translations. My presence escorts a cloud that obscures their sun. I am until , forgotten, the last stained shirt hanging. They continue to pursue life during my absence. What about friends? By definition, I am deprived of any friends. Surrounded by people who save their love for pictures and popularity. Friends ensue fear: fear of rejection, fear of loneliness, fear of being true. All vicious wolves in pursuit of an unstable fawn. Lovers? Intimacy is an act. Fake feelings shared to make the audience clap. Sex is only sensation, meant to be performed with encore. Lovers never learned to love. Each living in paranoia of betrayal. The black widow consumes her mate after acquiring her needs. God. A grandfather sways on his porch as he spews tales of hope, hope for saving our damned souls. The Bible. Our entire existence falls upon stories printed on mass-produced paper. If God makes us all, why would he create a puppet of cotton attached to strings of mercury? With a slight movement of his hand, my stings are tangled. Crushed by the mercury, my seams begin to rip. I can no longer be a good show. Yet, I do pray. I pray for a boat as I drown in the murky waters of my mind. Happiness. My tiring search comes to an end as the blisters on my feet rub raw. We all wear masks with a painted crescent that covers our true emotion, never to be removed. I catch of glimpse of eyes hiding in the shadows of carved cedar. Fear dwells within those eyes. Fear of being exiled from these four walls. As my paint fades, I envision a victorious flame fueled by pigmented smiles. I crave the happiness of others. From inside these walls, I have only shook the hands of fear and sadness. I cannot be happy alone. I wish to escape my thoughts. I desperately reach out, but the disguises impair their vision. For freedom from these walls, I release the rubies that stab from underneath my skin. We all have gems, I will show them mine. Love, God, Happiness. None of these things can change the fragility of a person with bones of glass. Nothing can save them. I had ambitions and a yellow brick road, but I took a wrong turn. As I reach where the sidewalk ends, a cliff presents itself. I stare at the broken asphalt that now lays beneath me to delay the inevitable fall. I recollect myself and take a bold look into the barrel. It is as dark as my future. My mind goes silent as I pull the trigger. Relief.