We hang here by a thread

Like the hangman

Who has lost his last letter.

Once forcing vivacity through our veins,

Light shrivels our passion, makes us crumble.

Our skin no longer quivers with fear in the wind,

For we swing numbly whole,

As if we were some strange metronome

Swaying back and forth to a slowing lazy pulse.

Bitter memories sentenced to vanish from thought,

We disappear with the tears we shed,

The blood that drips from our surrendered pride.

The dead are not pale, blue-lipped things.

No.

Our colors remain true, simply singed

By mourning cinders of guilt and regret.

So we hang, trapped by twines of repressed thought,

Only forced back to the surface of the subconscious

By the perfume circling round our heads.

We are no longer sweet or innocent.

We are but a sickly-sweet sensation

That smells like grandma was buried

With cinnamon cookies tucked under her apron.

We are a shell, a corpse, a dried crumbling effigy of life.

We are nothing from nowhere, no one at all.

And I am but a silenced reflection,

Trapped in the window to your soul.

So open your eyes.

See me.