Parchment

I wake up in the middle of the night and can't sleep until I put these words out of my head. The words themselves, they come out dark and over the top. I know this but forgive my imposition on your reading, for I have never learnt where this line lies.

Dear Poetry,

Why aren't you dead?

Everything you've ever said about the world is exactly what makes me wish I were never born, and ironically at the same time those very things coupled with every beautiful echo that you resonate sustains my breath.

What sustains yours?
Not money and fame,
But maybe your pain?

You kill me and bring me back to life every time I hear that inflexion in your voice. You make me shudder under the sheets when I'm alone in bed. I will not stop writing about you and I will scratch the nib of my pen faster when my arms shiver from exertion, when my hands go numb, when the blood drains from my fingers and my back arches and aches, because my mind's thoughts of you never stop running, from one sentence into the other. They see me as a hunched figure, starved, a mere dim light illuminating my pale face and bloodshot eyes as I hungrily undress you in my head. I look crazy I know, I sound crazy I know, but I daren't stop. You move me like no other, you make me into this, you haunt me, you plague me, your voice hinders my sleep, you inspire my prose and without you I'm rendered illiterate. You make me feel like there's more in store for me, beyond what I see as what isn't my life.

My existence was in lieu of yours.

Take me away for days and mouth to me all you know. Show me how to be dead alive, for as long as you can beat this curse, I too may.

I don't always hear you,
But I think I know you,
I implore you,
So will you?

Sincerely,
Prose