The notation of an old world, a locked door with no more key.

Soothing music scrapes against the roiling tightness in my chest. My hands quiver. My head buzzes with the anticipation of a dull task for my mind. I try to surface too quickly. I forget how to hold my breath. The dark fills me deeply. Yet, I remain still as stone, eyes distant. I feel my mind retreat far, far away. My heart spills, ripped open by its own thorns. The dissonance washes over me like anasthesia.

I rationalize others' love for myself because deceit is in my nature. My heart is full of hate and white lies, yet my face attempts naught but focus or whimsy. And every day, when the job is done, the laughter fades, and I return home to those quiet nights of solitude... I rip off the mask, and tear the flesh of my face.

I'm not programmed to want death, I'm programmed to fear it. Even when I am miserable, what my body wants is not death. No, what I want is to not suffer. That is the real thought. Still, an unrealistic goal of nature... though that is where the temptations of death find their grasp. Perhaps entropy is the process of correcting an error in the universe, perhaps that is why it pervades into all aspects of it. I want to reach out, but what is the point when I am so far along such a different path? How could they ever possibly reach me? I fear they would only drag me back onto the straight and narrow. I am not so blind that I could walk it again.

"Cultivation" These gardens that we grow, seeking to make the time not pass; O' conceited Night, why do these flowers reek of blood? Even their sweet scents no longer guide, as the stars; And all meaning does give way to the blade's edge.

| Do you remember when there was passion? | “The memory sweeps through me like a breeze that smells of roses.” | Roses? | “Deceptively beautiful, and yet beautiful all the same.” apainfulbeatofpainfulsilence “Burst forth from your cocoon of hypnagogia." | I don’t understand. | “The multiplicity of experience, echoed by antithesis. The imaginary space of information; potential. Spiraling synchronicity.” itfillsallspaceslikerot | Why must you always speak in riddles? | “…and in those moments that we are still, we slip into a trance, not unlike Death. There are gaps in my world, like negative spaces that eat reality; unrendered…” | I want to wake up now. Right now. | yetevenindreamswedonotsleep

I want so badly to wash away the past. I know it's ignorant and naïve, but I can't help but yearn for that golden sensation—when life felt simple. Perhaps it is delusion, but there are slivers of truth in every lie. I feel that disgusting distortion of me; someone I used to be. It's a weight I presume I will bear until death. I loathe it. I can see every time I look in the mirror: the charlatan, hiding in my eyes. I can't tell which face is a mask anymore.

I remember there was something I wanted to say, but while the essence of it hummed inside my head, my pen struggled to phrase it. It came out simple, not the complex web I had seen moments prior, and while in the moment I felt a swell of pride, in the aftermath I felt disappointment, self-doubt, and a burning frustration.

“Apostasy” A fortress forged in exile, A pair of rivers clash within, To summon forth the weapon, This blade that you beguile, Your mind is your direction, A clock without a when, A mirror that has shattered, Discordant rhythms overlaid, Splicing soul and flesh abrade, Staring at the starless sky, A shadow seeks to edify, Trifecta seeks to mend the whole, Departing from the oversoul, That place that has been broken.

“Rend from your Maker’s flesh that which holds the chaos: potential… …and so he pierced himself with those slivers of dead-flesh, and was split into that which makes and unmakes…”

I am going to die. Inside, this is the only truth I know for certain. I am going to die. I shall burn in that deep blue flame. I shall become a dissociative distraction once more—a phoenix, born only to die again.