I stare at a blank mind. The paint has run dry. I have no color in which to recite the words of a Latvian king. The clock is a dot, numbers all nonsense like anti-gravity wine in a spaceship. I feel as if I need to bang my head against an ancient Peruvian wall to dislodge something, anything. Thoughts, words, wisdom. I despair over the seemingly endless struggle and worry. Life makes absolutely no sense. The here and now is a there and gone in a matter of seconds. The future evaporates with every psychedelic tick-tock of the other dimensional clock. I am caught in a hybrid landscape. I want to run and scream. I want to fly and be invisible. I want to be motivated by an adrenaline electrode set against a perfect part of the brain. Every step and heartbeat is precarious. I ache for ancient wonder and escape. The queen falls asleep, every day, next to me. I can smell her in the rumpled sheets. Fear pierces me from beyond the curtains. The thin slits of sunlight are like daggers. Life has always been too hard for me. And it seems like everyone else has it all together. I feel like a failure fried egg. I feel like a broken toy, an empty bottle, a blank sky. I think I was born like this, from the lake of ache. Then cast out to wander a perilous world. I’ve always been too nervous, so I lurk in the shadows. I never know what to say. Quiet is a sin while loud and obnoxious are virtues. My soul is cluttered, but I have no spirit or energy to clean it out. So I sit and stare while the world spins and spins. Time diminishes. I am no contribution. I eat yogurt with a doll spoon and gaze toward the haunting.

By

Aaron Echoes August