Entry

Cheap white beveled trim edges the line of the doorway,

and I step through it.

I think I like to believe it's the pathway into the beginning of the end.

Or maybe the end of the beginning.

Anywhere where 'Hell' might be,

Because 'Heaven' is a mystery.

A mystery to me.

I think-

I think I would like to believe that,

but really all I am doing is looking up at the big empty space around me.

Tight and narrow stairs cluster in the empty doorway,

splitting off down and up in either direction to tiny spaces I suppose we ought to occupy later.

With what? I cannot say.

All I know is that it's too empty for my aching heart,

but I step forward and drag my suitcase up the steps to deposit it there.

I think I do a little spin,

look around at the vaulted ceiling and question where I ought to be right now.

Here?

Am I welcome here?

Or will this place hate me as much as the last?

The place that threatens to tear me apart for its amusements as the people around me parade pieces of me to their newest patrons as trophies.

I shudder to imagine horrors of that reoccuring.

I don't have much left.

Not really... Not if I aim to keep myself from throwing myself off the roof,

or hitting that barricade on the side of the tall hillside and out into whatever sits below to catch the soon-to-be bits of me if I'm stupid enough to go.

"New." I murmur out to myself.

"New." I nod to myself.

It's all very new.

And I can nod to myself in confidence, knowing that the couch I'll be buying tonight will be where I curl up tonight.

My old friend is dead.

She can't meet me here to cover me up,

but I supposed that I didn't just lie on it later that night.

I cried instead.

Curled up and clutched my shoulder and sobbed into it,

because no one could hear me and if they did,

I'd muffle my face in the cushions so passerby people couldn't hear it echo off my barren walls.

Oh so lonely.

Oh so fucking lonely.

I am alone.

And I hate how alone I am,

because my friends are dead.

The ones that keep my out of my head.

She gave me one last farewell,

long after her brother.

And she is dead.

Dead like the way my heart feels.

Because who else is there to watch me cry,

without thinking in their mind's eyes that I am guilty.

Guilty in the way that they might break me apart for their latest study.

Put me on display and sneer at me as they try to mold my thoughts like they're putty.

Disgusting, vile in that they might assume to know me off a few little instances,

but they know nothing.

But I'm not an empty shell.

I just know right now,

I'm mentally aware of my hell.

Of the hell I walked out of.

Of the hell that I'm still crawling up from.

Because the screams have scratched raw out of me.

And I think all manner of voices I might bellow out are long since dragged from my throat.

So here,

here I lay, wondering if I can beat this maddening decay.

I'm not going down.

Not here. Anyway.

They'll have to catch me asunder another time.

Snipe a little higher. I suppose.

Either way, I'm not fucking dying,

and nothing they're doing is going to make me go into death's throes.

Fuck them for even trying.

I'm drying my eyes now.

For the war drum is just beginning to beat,

and my eyes are filled with fire now.

I'm not their whipping boy anymore.

I'm crafting a whip from hard flame.

Forged in the fire and flesh.

I'm coming back to play them by their game.