crying into my shoulder as i attempt to make coffee, wanting to be alert for the misery that will keep sleep at bay

the put me down of this everlasting misery more than the pick me up of this dark brown sludge, the black taint on my mind, this stabbing pain in my chest, this feeling of helplessness times hopelessness times bitter understanding that all of it is deadly real

and death is a commodity i cannot afford, like bills and groceries and life

stuck between surviving and subsisting, alive and lifeless like a mannequin bobbing on the waves of this coffee colored ocean of anguish

the cold tile won’t notice a body lying, lying to stop myself from crying, lying to everyone that it is alright, lying on a bed of nails hoping one punctures an organ, lying and crying and denying and trying to hold it all together as the wrecking ball comes flying, sighing and hating the deep breath, replying to the cold silence with coffee breath and the flickering fables of happy ever after spilling from my bleeding tongue

crying into the filter, hoping to filter the sorrow into distilled tears of joy, to filter out the pain that beats with a heart of its own, an echo to the thundering pulse of a thousand dying dreams

silently begging for relief, release, reset, regressing into a monotheistic state of creationism and a pantheon of super villians named after lost loves and jettisoned into the open arms of an uncaring mother figure

the roast is medium while the humor is dark, the creamer and sugar a dusty clump on the surface and a deep dive into the psyche of making the perfect cup of java is lost to shaking hands and broken spirit

hard to sell advertising space on a desolate channel of repeating infomercials on the deadly grace of depressive mind states

of regressive ignorance and fleeting feelings of hope

just enough sugar to make the brew palatable, not enough to remove the taste of failure, not enough to quell the image of shattering the pot and stabbing with the shards, a crimson arc over a slow sullen drip

wanting an ending that isn’t in a pool of my own regret

wanting an ending that is a new beginning, wanting to not want anything, not need anything, to have enough to make it on my own, to make it a little longer, to make it all fade to black

fade away

the light has gone out and the shadows have overtaken my heart, the light has gone out and the afterimage of what was lingers on my cornea, the light is out

if the light was ever there in the first place, if it wasn’t another feverish attempt to stave off the ever gripping fear, the ever lingering doubts and half remembered phrases, the half forgotten whispered promises that this too shall pass

this too shall pass

happily ever after is the daydream of a child, happily ever after is the mutterings of the insane, happily never after, happily sought after, happily skipping along the riverbank, happily ingesting the coffee, happily ever after is a lie

happily ever after is a lie

a fairy tale where the prince is just a pauper who date raped the sleeping princess, the step mother wins the day, the magic mirror a pathological liar, the cup ran away with the spoon

the cow never acknowledged the moon

a never ending cycle of escapism and reality is the brick to the back of the head

never ending, a river of coffee colored nightmares and inescapable doom

broken and lying on the floor waiting for the dripping to end

lying on the floor, to myself, in a pool of my own lies, in a puddle of broken dreams, in a fairy tale of happily ever afters and sobbing hopeless nothing

the last kiss goodbye and the return of caffeinated heartache

happiness is a lie