I'm dead inside.
I'm a rotting corpse,
with a gaping hole
dug out of its heart.
Lymph, blood, and pus
spew out all over my
sallow gray body.

I'm numb to all emotion,
My entrails are strewn
across my legs, bones
puncturing my flesh,
at unnatural angles,
twisted, forced, snapped.

My empathy is being
eaten away by grave-worms.
Hungry maggots tear at my organs,
and mosquitoes dig beneath my flesh
and drink my sweet, black,
cold, and dead blood that sticks
to the insides of my veins.

I used to be alive,
vibrant, fresh, and young,
now I'm dead, gray,
and decaying.
I don't remember what
happened anymore. I just know
that no one can help me.

My world is no longer a
big enough place to contain
my afflictions.
What was white is black.
What was right is now wrong.
Death is simply a darker life.

My casket's been measured,
my grave dug.
I retain no hope. But,
for you, I carry a place in my heart,
even though my heart was long since torn out.

Even as who I am, myself,
bleeds out in the darkness,
I hold onto the thought
of you. Your smile.
You are and were a lioness.
A fiery home for me. My life.


Don't mistake this for hope.
I'm beyond that now.
Just know that you were,
and will be until my tattered soul
is shattered,
my sword in a den of thieves.
My whisper in a place of silence.
My Lion-heart.