like a trashcan fire in a prison cell

like the search lights in the parking lots of hell

air is crisp and holidays drip past me. lack of significance in ancient miracles and fantastical figures, maybe a glossy compact mirror will make me care. but apathy is a gripping condition, it lives dormant and mute behind the breast-bone. silently awakening to let you know these things don't matter. it is not these things that matter.

let's live on coffee and supplemental neuro-transmitters. let's keep self medicating until our blood is no longer pure and the pressure that exists within us is ready to explode. let's keep writing and reading and walking and running until we have any clue as to what we are walking towards. what concept we are approaching. what dream sits at the ledge waiting for me to arrive. like a girl sitting at the edge of a cliff looking out at a landscape hugging her knees into her chest, glancing behind her, chin to shoulder blade to quietly acknowledge I am finally there.

does the dream wait for the dreamer or does the dreamer wait for the dream? who is it that is perched at the edge of this terrain? more unsolvable questions. kept in my back pocket. wrinkled paper warm and damp of ideas i will never follow to their potential. uncertainties that will be solved only in death. i try not to self destruct, in these moments of profound, omnipresent confusion. where the only thing i know for certain is that i know nothing at all. that the pursuit of truth is a trivial path. that answers will never come. only more moments to ruminate on lack of concrete atonement.

so i protest against pollution. against the ache in my lungs, contracting and gasping for air. fresher air. higher altitude. is this what matters. this is what matters. attempting to craft goals for the new year. to replace the old. shed a layer of skin and exfoliate until the dead cells drop off and a new coat is revealed. more toned, even texture, smoothed over and unified. if only i could push this weight off of my body and back into the atmosphere. no lingering shadows of darkness that follow behind me. it is what it is and i must allow myself to move independently from the burdens i have come to know all too well. to swim with strong and large strokes through whatever waters i travel and glide towards who i want to be, or rather who i know i am underneath the bitter coatings. to better myself with each breath, head turned sideways out of the water, preparing to propel forward. it is not in finally approaching land or arriving to any destination, time reveals that the glory is in the swim, or in the pursuit, and rarely in the achievement. i will believe in the process, in a rhythmic pattern used to exist more peacefully than this. to know this process is my own task, and whether or not the weight is shared, i will bear it. i must bear it on my own and find the reward in every corner turned. maybe then i will come to terms with this nightmare. maybe the nightmare will return to a dream.