Write in the Middle

Without You When she speaks When she speaks The words are broken A twisted poem When she speaks Makes you think When she speaks Her heart is bleeding When she speaks She sets all free She has spoken Will you listen?

The words come out haunting, chilling, poetic, like a symphony rolling off my awaiting tongue. I will myself to stop, to zip up my heart like I did before, but I can’t stop now, I’ve only just started. Something’s happening to me and I can’t stop it.

My head hurts. My skin thinks it’s being shredded off my body. My eyes fill with blood tears, like the hands of life are squishing them. But my fingers keep typing the bone-chilling poetic melody. I know the dead. I see the dead. I hear the dead.

Admitting to my abilities always felt like releasing a plague to the world. Now I’ve started and I can’t get myself to stop.

The poison spreads to only those in disbelief. You won’t forget. You won’t forget.

You won’t forget. Once ignored, the illness is only more powerful, only more painful.

The words are killing me. Save me. Help me.

I am staring at the cracks in the ceiling, counting how many are so small I almost don’t notice them. I am silently willing my eyes to get that familiar heavy feeling and finally glaze over in exhaustion. But I feel the words crawling up my spine. I know I will wake up wondering when I fell asleep, but for now I don’t believe I ever will.

I am thinking as I stare at the cracks. Thinking about you, but it hurts too much. I am thinking about the lies I’ve led myself to believe. I am thinking about the cracks.

What are they really? What is anything really? I am making up stories about each crack. Surely I’ll forget them tomorrow but for now I have something to believe in, the terrible lies I make up to comfort my broken soul.

I awaken with tearstains running down my face. I feel them again. They’re telling me something. I listen. They’re telling me they’ve set a place for me at their table, that I should join them. I listen. Nothing they can say will persuade me, but I know how it 45