Requiem

They say your heart aches.
Mine doesn’t. My back does.
There is an uncomfortable feeling in my spine.
It doesn’t hurt, exactly, I just know it is there every second.
Tears occasionally leak from my eyes, like pus from a wound.
They have no meaning and bring no relief.
My mind is desperately searching for something:
words, feelings, escape –
but there is nothing there.
Just a body:
stupid,
mute,
incomprehensible.
Experience unmitigated,
voiceless scream,
feeling that has no name:
not sadness,
not pain,
not anger –
nothing eating at my bones,
squeezing my tear-ducts,
stripping off words,
exposing the emptiness inside and out.
My thoughts go into familiar grooves
and then slide off again – into nothing…
I feel old.
I feel chilly with understanding
that most things just are.
Not for something.
Not because of something.
They are – and there is the end to it.
Here.
Now.
It.