…and in the evening of Saturday, the first of September of the year two-thousand and twelve I said everything else I could possibly say.  Having repeated myself, my excuses, my reasons, my explanations, my pleas, my fears, emotions, and insecurities, I burst into tears at the important advice from a friend and finally peeled the last layer from my body.  The skin had already begun to scar in areas.  The knees, where I’d fallen so many times from going to fast or not paying attention.  The marks from face-planting or brushing up to close against something too wrong.  The skin on my face cracked against the salty water my eyes would not stop purging.  My hands, and all the microscopic cuts that rolled, almost carelessly by now, all over them from fighting too hard to hold on to things of which no one could otherwise convince me to release.  My un-manicured nails showing what mindless and unaware furosity my teeth can have, and that’s only just on my own hands.  One could only imagine the hands of whomever would harmfully cross my path or of any other whom I cared so deeply.  And yet all these scars and extra layers of skin could not protect me from this.  I had exposed myself to such fire, such passion, the heat burned and only left me wanting more.  More of something I could not have.  My skin, vulnerable and shedding every last piece of protection it offered was left tender, and raw.  And I collapsed.

The memory of hearing your voice say you love me is hard to find purely lately.  Just like the memory of your lips pressed up against mine or your arms wrapped around me.  I have to close my eyes now and focus to find them. They grow more and more distant.  I can’t even convince my mind to let me dream about you.  I’ve never wanted anything so much.  I’ve never felt such loss.  A true death.  An ache that can consume my very being within one second.  I love the time when it was a tour.  When there was a lighthouse.  When coming home felt real because you were there.  It’s so dark now.  The lighthouse is dim and flickers only once in a while.  Every last piece of energy striving to keep it alive.  I cannot see too well because of it.  But I can still hear the waves crashing.  They remind me I’m awake.  That I unfortunately will not wake from a nightmare.  But that I now live in one.  And like all nightmares, I cannot seem to run fast enough.  I cannot see through the blurry vision.  And though I scream no one hears me.  It is a waking coma.  A place where death and life sit and play chess.  These are my vital organs they use to play for what is left of my soul.  I can still live, but I do not feel life.  A faint heartbeat remains, but… there is a heart.

Quiet.  Listen

…sometimes when she inhales her eyes roll.  I wonder what she sees, even with her eyes closed.  “What does the monitor say?”

“Who is The Monitor?”