I awaken, but I sleepwalk through my days.  I find that nothing tastes as it should, that it is all ash upon my wicked tongue.  Even the sun’s light is tainted sickly against the sky.  I hug my coat around my frame and wish for an absolution, an answer.  I find none.

In the end, it always comes down to me.  There is no one else here, upon this cliff within my mind.  I walk its jagged terrain, clutching scraps of paper upon which I have dashed words and poems, phrases with meaning to my battered heart.  I read the sad ones, and try to cry.  I’m too numb to let go.

Like a ghost, I am a prisoner in my last habitat, the place where I died.  And yet, my heart continues to beat, my blood runs, and within me, cells multiply and divide in ways I fear.  I do not trust their intentions.  I don’t even trust my own.

Over the years, many have wandered these cliffs, pausing at the precipice to gaze upon the shores below.  Kind souls, selfish souls, the whole gamut.  Each has whispered to me, some hearing my pathetic dirge of ‘woe is me’.  In the end, they retreat from the edge, and depart.  It is the natural ebb and flow of the tides, after all.  And I understand water, for I am it.  But I am fire too.  Does this mean I cancel out myself, until I evaporate?

Is this why I feel so alone?

Once, long ago, these words lay scribbled upon a sheet:  “I am already dead; why try to survive?”  The scenery changes, but the question remains, unanswered, like my fractured heart’s frightened cries in the night.

Day 152:  Winter In My Heart – Vast