Quiet moments of desperation lead to self-reflection, lead to self-analyzation, lead to self-deprecation, lead to self-demonization, lead to self-infliction. In between brief glances from strangers, the shuffling of feet and the sickness of being, agonizing realizations creep among the silence…knowledge setting firm that it is all true. Time has passed you…

Remember the haunting voices of those who have died? Remember their smiles? Remember what it was like to be with them? And here you are alive, their memories nothing by a whisper within a sigh.

Remember the ways in which you were harmed - cut straight through into your heart? Was it careless, or was it purposeful? Deep within the wound, does such a poison reside as to never heal? Or were you lopped off by parts and pieces? Is there something missing from you now that can never come back?

Perhaps you’ve been running all along. Their darkened shrines baring soft light, illuminating your gasps but offering no quarter. The world may rest, but you cannot. You will never rest. Sleepless nights, darkness drowning into morning, you don’t even mouth words lying in bed anymore.

When every moment pushes forward into the next, a teeming throng of seconds crushing headlong into eternity, you begin to see the fleeting, beautiful, ringing laughter of happiness for what it is: a mere twinkling, prismatic spray among the mute sea of eternal death.

In your quiet moments of desperation, when you’re mask is securely fashioned so that the public cannot set upon you like a pack of ravenous dogs, do you ever wonder when your sorrow will end? Or do you wonder when the silence will finally take hold, choke you of your breath, and vanquish your light?