n/a -- exit

poetry: no more

--

I woke in the woods. I slept with no one beside me. I was not interested anyone else. I was not interested in understanding another man or woman. The morning's early onset was brighter than the days before, even the months before. The sun was a giant cataract hindering me from taking in the tops of evergreen trees. Hindering me. I wrapped the torn remnants of blanket around my shoulders and spit blood onto the cold, black earth. My lungs have been degenerating for days. I can feel the ruby droplets collect and form a pomegranate within my chest. The blood-spit wrapped itself around a moss-covered stone. Red on green. Green on red. Christmas colors, I thought. It was a tiny present to the Earth, a little salutation after years of an existence that lacked a proper introduction.

This-is-me.-I-have-been-here-all-along.-Growing.-Shitting.-Dying.

The song of cardinals was a warning. In the silent hours everything remained still and the ferns, lilies, and mushroom rot hissed tiny curses as I stood amongst them. And in their curses I felt at home. I knew their hatred well. Their tiny leaflets and heads hung low as my feet passed amongst and over them. While I was an object of their hatred I was also undeniable a force that they had no control over. My existence, to them, was that of a putrid invader. A heart beating to drip toxicity amongst their home, amongst their young. My brain pulsed as I considered their innate, actionless hatred. My stomach lurched giving way to a guttural roar heard by none.

One could ask how I find myself in the forrest sleeping. I wouldn't resign myself to just a single, or even multiple answers. It was an impulse. I wanted to die among the barren and the godless. I wanted to meet my end in the month September, yet I'm alive well into the month of November. For a while I kept a record of my days by arranging the bones of the animals I fed on. For a while I kept a record of the animals I fed on by drawing lines in the ground that represented the names I had given them. I was thankful. They deserved names. But now the animals were migrating to the South-- and I could not survive winter here.

Amongst the swirls of dirt and broken sticks and fallen autumn leaves I surveyed the land. I looked across the mountains and into the mire of the clouds. Anything I could see, I saw. I noted the segments of an old, forgotten road to the South and averted my gaze. There were no men here and there was no place for them. Not even I belonged here. I wanted to die with no trace of me remaining, no trace of man, no trace of existence. The road was a representation of man's urge for direction, for meaning, for the lack of a personal compass or will. The road was a hollow, fallow thing. The cracked blacktop, partially covered in foliage and plantforms.

So I turned my back to the South and headed into the North.

To die as all men do-- broken & alone.