When happiness is felt it's genuine but it's guilty. I shouldn't feel it. Never ever. It's temporary. We make plans without each other. We force each other to fight. It's our only source of exchange. We don't understand what we already know. We leave each other alone at tables. We spend money on drunken hope, on drunken happiness. Fleeting. We are always together in the end.

I leaned my head against the plastic and wished to be in hell.

The air was different tonight. It felt good. The moon was out, hardly half. I felt good to go home. But the shadow illuminated in the small light sent me down a flight of metal steps. Four individual cuts into my skin. They don't bleed. He treats others differently than he treats us. We are his rusty trophies. Lying and smiling. I no longer know what to do, say. I don't say anything anymore. But I hear, all the time. I just sit and look at an image. Of hope? Of understanding? Knives point in so many directions. And Sometimes I just want to run. No where. Just run until my legs burn and my chest heaves. Until there's no air. Until I'm in the dirt.

Over and over the piano plays in my veins.

The bit of feeling I do produce hurts and it bursts. Conjured by something so different. Sleep is the last thing on my mind as my throat tightens, choked by unseen hands. It never used to be this hard. It never used to be like this. Or was I always covering my eyes?

How did you survive? I didn't. But life and time continues.