I have come to an age now, a tattered twenty-two, at which I now appreciate the coarser things in life. Perhaps because I have been raised and accustomed to the finer it is now my turn to sulk, surrounded by every hurtful image my mind can conjure–to feel grossly inadequate in ways people do not even consider. And, to hate myself for what I have not become, peering always through the periscope of “if” to what could have been.

I hear and feel my bones fold them selves, cracking, crumbling, grinding, leaving bone dust and debris inside of me to gnaw at my organs. These fragments pass through my tenders like terrorists at security checkpoints, slipping by uncontested to destroy. My own structure giving out and fighting against the healing currents of biochemicals to damage me further. To hurt.

My treacherous bones, my structure gives out. Muscles atrophe and I collapse on to what is left, a heap of skin and tissue. My skull is slowly dissolved by toxic signals which my brain has already used to ruin my body, my life. Slowly, the conciousness that can withstand the pain turns its efforts on to itself and its shell and protection is cannabalized by the source of my existence.

My vessel implodes and a mess of what cannot be combusted pours into a mass of pudding. The path it travelled is washed away by the progress of newer, stronger life. The soup that is left slowly seeps into the sewers to nowhere and the last of me has sliipped away forever. What’s left is a repugnant stench of a reminder that there was an essense that belonged to me. And, it may be forgotten, or it may haunt your lives forever. Do with it what you will. Just know that I am gone.