Bloodletting at Dawn

Morning arrives and the dawn hits you on the head like a thunderbolt. Your calloused heart feels like it is about to explode. Palpitations ebb and flow in spite of the unearthly pain that subsists. The generic feeling of helplessness refuses to lift itself from the cables in your chest. It feels as though an aneurysm is coming on slowly, one that cooks and cooks until that final gasp where the strings will eventually break. Then you are left out in the open wondering if this predicament is truly real. You look out the single pane windows into the backyard and see pieces of yourself scattered everywhere like last year’s sawdust. They are only ashes, you remind your conscience, but they deny any attempt to be blown away into the ether. And then you wonder, are you decent or are you a monster. It’s pretty difficult to tell these days. Does it take two people to sever a relationship? Certainly, it must. The searing sun breaks through the clouds as children’s voices siren their way through the glass. The distance is rather far, but it’s an engine in the eardrum, just like the distance between rabid animals. You think about honor and all the idealism that peers go on about. Loyalty is still there inside of the rat’s nest. Love is still brimming from inside of the rat’s cage. There’s a razor stuck in the back of your throat. You want to tear it away from where it taunts you on its perch. Some days you win. Others you get destroyed. Sometimes the past is far and sometimes the future is close. You’re not deaf or dead yet. At least you can still hear all of the laughter that is slowly killing you. You still have taste, a taste for wine and slow, morose music. But the pain is immense. It is some form of torture to face the implosion of severance. Hushed footsteps enter the house in unannounced interviews. More ragged clothes and keepsakes disappear from their locations. Is it an exorcism or apparition’s angry burglary? Music overwhelms the mind in gigantic rushes of energy and then it all goes still like a sudden eerie exit. The darkness creeps in again as if it never disappeared. And it’s larger than anything else. It’s a great wall that is utterly unscalable. There is ice in the turgid air and it takes the shape of your thimble life and snuffs out any remaining gratification. You want to smash what remains into a thousand fragments. The world and every word between us has been broken anyway. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to watch it all return to the earth?