Brief Lucidity, Interlude

Is this what has become of me?

A mere shadow of myself, a mindless zombie-

This one fall evening, alone at home,

sneaking in the dark corridors, I can't help but whisper,

''I live here? In this empty, sad place?''

*

Of moldy bread and corner-y cobwebs

and twenty pairs of shoes, boots and moccassins

Distant, false echoes of laughters and incoherent words

and the house creaks and breathes, sucking in the silence

*

I have never felt more alone, more lost.

Here I am, living with friends, in the big city

But the summer dreams have died. With it, naive hope

In its place, a troubled, sick mind, crawling in circles

Of half starts and terrible ends

Perhaps at last a future, a place, for me?

And no, there is nothing here. Or there.

Or anywhere really, nothing for me.

*

But who am I kidding? I alone am to blame;

Families embracing me, I push them away.

Strangers warming to me, loving me? Go away!

The eyes of a beautiful girl, stop staring at me

*

I am my own downfall, and I can't change.

For if I do change, I'd be forsaking myself

What is there, really, but love and time, both of which I hate?

I know, after all, that these fleeting feelings are but a

brief lucidity, an interlude,

from this unassumed,

half buried despair,

all-consuming.