Alone. Tired. Broken. Tell me something I haven’t been. Show me someone who hasn’t seen it all. Show me someone who hasn’t seen at all. And then I will give you my treasure. Then I will open my chest to your prodding, unhinge my locks and melt my chains, and all of it will be yours for the taking. And take it you will, but only to throw away. When your finest moments are the strangest to others, when your finest moments are silence and warmth, who can know? Show me a man who has slept enough to rise quick and easy when morning crests, and I will show you a corpse. Along with a few of my skeletons that knock the undersides of the floorboards as I pass you by without a word. You thought they were footsteps and maybe you were always right, and I was only walking. But forward. That is my direction.

Backward. Whose direction is that? Tell me and I will show you a pearl. Condensed silt, why so valuable? Density. And if my density is your silt, how will we ever learn to speak, and value our little songs and keepsakes?

One man’s trash is another man’s fertilizer, and up spring the flowers of gold transparency. This is the hope I cling to. And if I do not live to see them bloom, place no plaques, build no memorials. The flowers are beautiful; I never was.

Until that day I will continue to do the same thing I have always done since the day I was born. Die, and slowly.