we are most alive in dreams

     People don’t bother me. It’s their complexity that sits me on edge. Always looking between every word they say, to find the origin and the true meaning behind them. It’s a quiet obsession. A subtle confinement that I linger on when my feet finally rest and my head can focus on one thing at a time.

     It’s unhealthy, and I recognize that. My heartbeat thumps inside my ears and my shrinking stomach turns into knots. Making lists of possible motives and goals that others have set beyond me. I am only a way-point. A tangent within a series of events that will lead them somewhere better than a room that holds my voice.

     And everyone I’ve ever known has ended up as a page in my notebook. Some have more pages than others. Some have their own notebooks. A shrine dedicated to them. Where I can sacrifice their limbs and their organs to some greater good.

     A greater good that no longer cares about the written word. So my effort seems futile and irrelevant. The hours I spend thinking and writing is just a waste of the only talent I have.

     So I wonder about the people I’ve met. If they’ve achieved their goals and if they smile more than they used to. If they have forgotten me and who their parasitic incisors are attached to now.

     We all feed off of each other.
     A nation of leeches.
     We’re all used and forgotten.