Ardor

Nine: Beating Hearts Numb Minds

Terror is clever; it can show up in so many different shapes and sizes that sometimes you don't even know it's there until it's too late, and you are smothered.

It is lurking in the dark; creeping in the corner; gnawing at the edges of your mind; hiding behind a smile.

Fear is not so adept. It is so constantly in your heart, pumping in and out through your veins that it's omnipresentness is as regular as a heartbeat.

Our hearts beat with the poison, our minds are numbed by it.

Lungs must fill before they can deflate, but there seems to be something wrong with my own pair. With each breath I do not feel life, I feel the air escaping right through me. The numbness fades away until I am left stripped and cold and victimized by my own demons. Demons that I thought I'd made a truce with; I guess they weren't happy with the arrangement.

The sky is as big and cold and empty as my own chest. The blood has ceased its course through my body, leaving me feeling crisp and fragile, like a piece of old paper. The wind could take me away and no one would ever think to notice another scrap fluttering in the breeze. No one would think to pluck me from the air, take away my fragility and fears, turn me into an actual boy instead of just a wallpapered rendition of myself; empty and breakable. No, that's not how the world works.

When the wind takes ahold of you you're already gone. I am gone. Something inside of me left a long time ago. Now I think too much, too deeply, too irregularly for the person I'm supposed to be. But here I am, alone and empty like a casket waiting for a body to fill it. The corpse may be cold, but so am I.

I'm a paper boy with an imaginary soul.

I'm breathing but I'm still not living.

The pulse on my wrist tells the world I'm alive, but not even I believe that lie.