"This is still a proximity that gets under my skin," trembling, the words quivered their way out, as arrows, piercing, ever digging deeper. The periodic risk of sheer exposure terrified her back into her shell. "As oysters we were, once, and yet again," said the king, the king of all things that reach - grabbing, shaking, dragging back down into - the sand, the pit, the sheer drop the sight of which can thrill before it chills, ever deeper, each time, digging into - the skin of the soul, bone-deep doesn't cut it, cut into, pieces of me, once again, forever, for-never more. "I can't stand this cohesion, the vicious viscosity of two twisted souls entertwining into overlapped bitterness; a betrayal, I'll find my way out." Threats and doubts - questions raised? Posed, poised, as she stood, windowpane never quite framed just as so, justice doth now bestow, bestow upon me some grasp of hope, fruitless, this is so virulent, a strain I can neither confirm nor deny. "Take this, take it from me, give me the plain face, the eyes that never see, the promises of things unproven consistently reverberating through the hollow shell of a skull... I'll take it, this time, oblivion is the only thing that could win." [Jesus fishes swim by through a fog of doubt, Darwin can never win when their claim is sweet oblivion.] Just do your job and do it well, well, well, I think to myself, I sink into myself, I think I can... not again. A face's ever persistent prescence could potentially shatter these walls, halls now made of glass, not stone. Contemplating the shape of a sickle pointed towards her, imagining the feeling of smashing - skull, bones, promises against a figurative brick wall. How would it feel to fall? "She looked so full of peace... and I like to think it was because when she died she could feel the wind against her face..." She tries not to cry, to fall, again - on knees and hands outstretched? Just waiting to get through this stretch, just this once, once more, to again prevail, pervasive as persistence proves... Taking another swig, her back straightens, she looks herself in the eye - and - after having locked herself in the bathroom to think, she thinks she can, chug along, play the game, look death in the eye, possibly not as figurative as seemed - she'll try.

The death of me always spawns a rebirth. Hopefully this time it won't die within a sigh.

Walls close in on, options slipping through fingertips like the pills she ought ingest, she tears her hair out with a silent scream - today is the day, now is the hour, mine is the power, mine is the power - powerless, she corrects herself, proves herself wrong, or right... about self - control and maybe this time, maybe this will be the last time, the last surge of heartburn and subsequent ache, of fever and chills and prolonged fills of stomach, regurgitating in another bathroom stall, she never quite could train herself to digest the digression of a passion turned pain.

The hotel phone has been smashed to pieces, but sometimes, when you hold the earpiece just so, you can almost make out the questions the emergency operator is so desperately inquiring of you.

The hollow of my throat holds all the answers. This is where the pain began, surely where also it will end; on occasion proving its persistence with a flare of a memory - here, right here, this is the spot, let us retrace our mis-steps into the decline of a glorious land, the harrowing tale of an underworld which sight cannot begin to see.

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