Static in my veins. A low hum

behind the eyes as days bleed

one into the other, a watercolor

painting left out in the rain.

Purpose was a word I used to know,

now just a shadow in the fog.

A phantom limb that doesn't ache,

a forgotten taste upon the tongue.

There’s a man in my mirror.

He’s a patient thing. He’s been there

since the day I was born, just watching.

He doesn’t look like me, not anymore—

there’s a hardness in his jaw, a glint

of something broken in his stare.

He’s the architect of this beautiful decay,

my hands are merely his tools.

He works in silence, carving bone and thought,

reshaping me to fit his cold design.

And numbness is a blanket, warm and heavy,

a strange kindness, a distorted mercy.

It muffles the frantic bird inside my ribs

and quiets all the screaming with its hush.

Tonight, the Hennessy is a sacrament,

a dark baptism in this failing light.

I raise the glass and drink to him, the one

who is my creator and my destroyer,

my only friend, and my true enemy.