Schema

An intense pain

between your two

back teeth.

-

Refreshing the same three websites again,

no change, no dopamine, no joy,

restless overnight again and blaming the noise.

-

You’ve been spinning around in circles

on repeat

for years now.

-

You

recall the passion that you had

and recognise that now

you let it all go, unlikely to return

the tracks in the field burnt.

-

Nothing really clicks the same,

you’ve become much of what you hated

and now you sit and watch time roll by

-

nonchalant

-

whereas before you’d have found something to do,

you might have lived.

-

You watch yourself rot in a box,

in the midst of some sick system you created

the same two meals on repeat

patterns of time spent, set alight,

the money saved beneath the floorboards

still not enough to make you happy,

you fulfil quotas but never your spirit.

-

The future is the positive space,

but any hope you have sits

just out of reach, taunting,

a balloon floating away but

letting its string slip through your hand from time to time,

keeping you invested.

-

The past an untouchable zone and

one you don’t dare to look at for long for fear

of the ground opening up

and swallowing you whole,

some things just aren’t to be reflected on.

-

Blocking out your flaws until they become so bloated that they block your vision instead,

your mind a parade of ugliness you try to hide

try to swallow down like the bitterest dry mud you can find

just to vomit it back up and face it, worse than it was before,

the iridescent slop you’ll have to consume again.

-

Check your notifications hoping for someone to save you

over and over, all the while knowing that words alone are not enough anymore,

find distraction in the physical pains from the new, more intense mental ones,

-

find distraction in hatred, in frustration you never felt before but which now burns like napalm and leaves no part of you untouched,

-

find distraction in pornography, exploitative images that hollow out the mind, a brief relief consumed by guilt, take the bad with the worse,

-

distraction in pure emptiness,

-

distractions from distractions

-

but that pain will always seek you out

and Ludovico your fears again

until you realise that

you’re comfortable in your misery,

-

happy to stay in it, barely afloat

feeling like a martyr for experiencing so much pain

that now you put it into yourself directly

and watch how the body reacts,

almost sadistic, addicted

to the anguish.

-

There is no vacation from the self,

it cannot

be escaped.