the end approached on hands and knees. monsters in frilly nightgowns sneaking coldly into our beds. 

we spent our bodies like pocket change. pennies against the deepening debt accumulating underneath our skin. 

we counted our ammunition. empty bottles and misplaced shame. we gathered our weapons. grief and addiction our only soldiers in a war with an impossible enemy. 

life fell like rain against the slope of our expectations. freezing into icicles in the winter of our discontent. 

we huddled in the cold. unmoved. undeterred from our hopelessness. 

until the weather turned at last. the frost melted. and all our epiphanies betrayed.

we crawled out from those decaying skeletons and discarded our dead skin. 

falling sharply against the tether of loyalty. relieved to see it break. 

 we dig our graves too early. riding our empty elevators. up and down until they break. the mechanics of flesh a permanent betrayal. 

we take our first bite. and our hunger explodes. enough never is. our starvation all that feeds us. 

the foul of time growing in our gut. as our words rot in our throat. every touch another dose of the poison. that's always been killing us.  

the miles fall like raindrops in a ocean of distance. we're no closer. no further apart. our circles become us. the futility is comfort. 

the fragile paradise of skin withers. flesh forgets. and we're left with our stale choices and poor judgment. 

we bargain with the grief. we shout at the truth. too deeply invested in the tragedy to ever let it go. 

 tomorrow arrived in mangled puzzle pieces. nothing clearer than our mistakes. we threw our harness around our grief. pulling hard on all the wild horses we'd unleashed. 

everything shrinking as we managed the betrayal. missing razors and empty nooses. a suicide of choices. as the reins fell away. 

we reasoned with the needle. the potency and the prognosis. 

we slipped out of our empty gowns. determined the moment would remember us. 

chasing contrition with rusted scissors and soiled dresses. 

we could see the stars. how their light had come so far to reach us. 

we could see the footprints on the ground. how all our maps had been displaced.

we had nowhere in particular to be. 

suddenly, all that mattered was where we'd already been. 

 conditionals were speculated. a referendum of flesh in a campaign of blood. 

there were voices no one could hear. there were places no one had been. an autopsy of choices. a thousand cadavers of tomorrows. all of them murdered. 

we drowned in the yellow of why. we wept in the conceit of how. licking the dirty needles that panic had left behind. 

goading the wolf. as our straw house began to tremble. counting all the bricks we'd yet to use. 

it was only time we needed. that silken curtain between then and now. 

we feasted on our growing hunger. 

we sipped as the flood overtook. never having learned how to swim.