i sketched a self portrait this morning with a pricked finger and vermillion lines across off white expenditures too varied to be recalled

as the red faded to rust faded to black to flake from the chemically treated pulp of a once mighty oak and the thousands of tiny gashes across my hand scabbed over

the face that scattered from the page to blow across the room and out the open door, small fragments of the me that painted with bits of myself was not mine

all that remained was the off white sheet of often marred myopic landscapes that pulsate within the fragments of many fond tomorrows in regret

bandaged hands that burn with tiny nervous endings, left to fester in the remnants of today’s sweet silence as the memory of yesterday infects the host

feverish from the need to create yet these prodigious digits have made a career of only tearing things apart as art is less the ending than the journey

where does it go from here, down an ever winding spiral where direction is as meaningless as the charred wick of the candle that droops from carbon malaise

i know not, just that the urge to slice another shallow line in the callused flesh is calling and another sketch of recompense is fated to fade to nothing