Alex.

That's what your name would have been.

It's on your birth certificate.

Our Alex: strong, smart, and kind.

The name engraved in gold

On a coffin far too small.

"Are you doing well?"

Well?

No.

Truth be told, I'm in Hell.

Just spinning round and round again stuck on this carousel.

My head feels like cabbage,

Clogged up by emotional baggage,

I'll salvage what I can just to keep from going savage.

So thank you for your patronage, but really, I can manage;

I'll walk the walk and talk the talk

I'll trudge through the sludge of my own thought

Chalk myself up as a laughing stock as I feast on nighshade and hemlock.

I strive to rise above my station

Achieve what's written in the constellations but I keep needing vacations and psychiatric consultations

I'm sick of all the preparations, stop telling me congratulations, I've barely done anything yet and I'm falling into desperation

Because I'm spinning round and round again with nowhere else to go,

Trapped on this stupid carousel, dragged on with the flow

My simulacrum should be pretty, but I'm feeling kind of dumb.

This conundrum's too confusing . . . so I think I'll just succumb.

I should have been there.

I should have been by your side the entire time.

I should have been glued to that creaky, scratchy chair, my eyes taped open, holding your hand like a lifeline because, love, that's what you always were.

I should have payed more attention,

Should have seen you deteriorating before my eyes,

Should have noticed your sunken cheeks and your trembling legs as you shuffled between the bedroom and the kitchen, determined to make us breakfast in bed,

But holding your hand never paid the bills,

Memorizing your face, tracing each and every contour of the skeleton becoming more and more prominent beneath my fingers never put food on our table,

Loving you put a roof over my heart, but not a roof over our heads.

The house doesn't feel like a home, anymore,

Not without you there,

Not without your laughter, your dancing, your tuneless little hums and I always used to tell you to write some songs but you'd just shake your head and smile.

I'm suffocating in the silence of your absence,

Drowning in memories long gone,

What I wouldn't do for a little more time, just a few more hours with you,

Because I should have been there in that hospital room,

Saying "I love you" for the last time,

Holding your hand as you drifted away,

But there just weren't enough hours in the day.