It isn't that I wish to cease to exist, rather that I know this life I'm living won't satisfy me forever, and I feel the day drawing nearer that I need a change.

I need to run away with only the clothes on my back and rings of every color dangling from my fingers

I need to steal my mother's car and drive to some place I will never see again

I nee to climb the tallest tree in the forest without fear of the thoughts that will cross my mind as I balance on the highest branch

I need to hear a new song that breathes life into me again

I need to bite into a new fruit that tastes of the color red

I beg to be freed of my gray and brown existence, even while I know that I'm the one with the power to change it, but one can only stare at the same walls for so long before it becomes impossible to dream of new sights.

Routine will leave me limp on the floor

I've long awaited adventure

I need it to come for me now.

"I should've kissed you."

His voice stirred the cold, still air. His sigh for a moment was visible, a soft cloud in the air before him, before it faded to nothing.

A tear slipped down his cheek, and his eyes fell closed. He felt it begin to freeze even as it traced down to his lips. He lifted cold fingers to touch them.

"I'm so sorry," he choked, and opened his eyes. They rested on the headstone before him. Cold, silent, unfeeling--it was everything she had never been. His eyes traced her name, engraved in gray rock. Without her smile in front of him, the glow of her cheeks, they were just words.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this." Tears blurred his vision, and he let his hand rest in the snow that covered her grave. "I meant to tell you sooner. I meant to tell you-- I -- I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

He broke into sobs, shoving his hand over his mouth. Shaking, he shifted from his knees to sit next to the headstone, his head falling between his knees. As his breath steadied, he turned his eyes back to where his gentle love lay in the ground.

"I thought you knew. There's no way I could have hid it from you, I-- I was in too deep. I was in too deep from the first day I met you. When I saw you on the balcony, laughing with your friends, your hair was still dyed yellow-blonde... I always liked it brown, you know. I should've told you that. I'm sorry. I just wish I'd said something, you know? You have to know, you have to..."

He pressed frozen fingers to his lips.

I should've.

While I still had the chance.

I call mine the Anxiety Demon. He’s a dark shadow of a man, and he lurks in the corners of my mind where no one can see. He haunts my dreams, sending me through labyrinths and tossing me into dark oceans.

Sometimes I think I’ve cast him out, but he returns, throws open the door like my mind is his house to trash. He sees what I see, hears what I hear, thinks what I think. And he takes it all, twists it. And then he delivers it to me, a snake hissing in my ear that he is right, and I’m fooling myself.

If he had a face, I could shout at him. But he’s faceless.

The light dies in his wake. He is a void, a black hole, a shadow like the dark of space with no stars. And he’s patient. He waits. Someday the sun will be gone too, vanished within the black vortex that is him.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

The word echoed through his head. Ever-present, no matter how he slammed his hands against his ears or drowned out the world with hard rock. The word was there. He knew it better than he knew his name.

He'd heard it said behind his back all his life. Even to his face, when his dad lost his temper and when his sister saw fit to remind him what she thought of him. You're so stupid, she'd say, a sneer on her face. Don't you know anything?

He could never find the words to fight back. Maybe he was stupid. His face would get red and blotched, and he'd storm away. Emotion was easy. Thinking, perhaps not so much. But he wasn't stupid. If only he knew how to say it.

A speech impediment, they called it. A learning disability. He knew what those words meant. And it wasn't his fault.

Stupid.

Because he couldn't solve a math problem?

Stupid.

Because he lost track of time?

Stupid.

Because he reads slower than he should?

.

.

.

No. No. No.

.

.

.

No.

The glimmer of distant stars. The sparkle of new snow. The shine of a pearl pulled from the sand. A swan gliding silently through still water. Lily of the valley spread through a gentle meadow.

A winning smile, the flash of teeth for the camera. Wedding dresses and the beauty of the moon reflected in a porcelain fountain. A blank canvas, smooth and perfect. The elegance of diamond earrings and the scent of vanilla ice cream.

The sleek keys of a piano, and the hardness of bone. A flag of truce waving in the wind, the string of a kite soaring high. A spotlight in the darkness. An endless cloud billowing across the skies.

Today I saw a white daisy caught on the breeze, and it made me think of you. It floated above my head, with a missing petal and a broken stem. It was beautiful. It was free.

Today I glimpsed a pair of yellow converse through a window in the mall, and it made me think of you. I thought of the girl who had run through grassy meadows with sunshine on her feet. I wished I was her.

Today I looked up at a blue sky, and it made me think of you. You with your smiles that outshone the sun, and your laughter that chased away the darkest clouds. A summer day in the middle of winter.

I saw life today, and it made me think of you.