It's like a thousand bags of sand settling inside you, but at the same time it comes in the guise of that unthreatening snowfall - people of the cold know that the swirling, glorious, recognizable flakes portend transience; it's the particle-imitating rain of snow that endures...and endures.

That's how this comes. Deceptively showering innocence, it is internalized as "just the way it goes." Then, so savagely it hardens into brutality - a shell forms - which is now the skeleton of all immediate possibilities.

How does this phantom know every single ingredient for a crushing recipe? How is it that every lost prize joins with every word of rejection and any possible doubt links to any imaginable failure?

Why does it have to be so completely complete?

It doesn't matter if the staircase is abysmal or the sun is arrogant. The prize could be unremarkable, the love unrequited, the choice miniscule, the future paranoid, but the sincerity of direction remains constant.

Down, down, down…

Sometimes... any moment prior to oblivion... these questions battle in "logical" defense, but they are less than the revered speed of light in the face of an undiscovered infinity bursting into invisibility.

The sadness is the worst.

Guilt, shame, and regret…they can be reconciled, but…inexplicable sadness… that's what settles, endures, hardens and paralyzes.

My only reason for living says, "Walk like you mean it,"

and I cry.

Want to comment on this Poetry? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Poetry and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...