My dreams are haunted and hungry
chasing sweet sleep from my skull.
What sleep I can keep is empty and dead;
only a corpse of my former restful slumber.
My thoughts are traitors.
Each one leading me back to a place I thought I'd left behind.
Thinking becomes a walk through a graveyard, damp with evening.
My memories betray me with their loveliness,
undermining the surly walls I have so recently erected
with their poisonous allure and their sickly addictive charm.
My body is torn and sore
from the fruitless efforts of battle,
it shivers and shakes like cold kittens,
so that I should not move at all.

In short, I am weary and frazzled
with no refuge to hide me,
no ally to aid me,
and no quarter or lull in sight.
I think that if I survive this
I will have little to fear,
for if I cannot destroy myself
then there is nothing that can do the job.

AcB 11.29.00