The Anatomy of My Own Ruin

Where Shall I Flee From Myself

From myself—

to whom shall I flee?

Where shall I search?

Which path is left to follow?

I am imprisoned

within my own cold body,

a body slowly coming apart,

circling for years

around the dense

and shadowed thoughts

of nothingness.

There is no escape.

Every fiber of my being

cries out

nothingness.

My heart still beats,

yet the living blood of life

has long stood still

inside my veins.

Nothingness—

that hostile twin of existence—

has seized my reins

and rides me mercilessly,

taming me

like an obedient horse,

forcing me to dance

across a dry

and forsaken desert.

It strikes my body

with its whip

and binds my mouth

with a muzzle.

There is no remedy

but surrender.

An ominous bird

has nested

in the hollow of my fate.

My being

has become the shelter

for its brood.

The mother of fortune

feeds them

worms of despair.

Inside my heart

they split their fragile shells,

feeding

on the knots

of my unspoken grief.

There,

upon the trembling branches

of the tree of fear and dread,

they learn

to fly.

For years they wander the air,

migrating through

the endless orbit of emptiness,

choosing their mates

beneath the same barren sky.

I fall apart.

Yet they—

from my sorrow,

which is their delight—

dance,

sing,

and cry out

their wild hymn

of freedom from existence.

They celebrate

my absolute release

from the chains of being.

With their sharp beaks

they loosen the threads

of the garment of existence

from my exhausted body

and scatter them

into the vast

and silent nowhere.

From myself—

to whom shall I flee?

When the birds

that devour my grief

have grown their wings

inside my heart.