I could see headlights outside of my room and I heard someone knocking but I didn’t get up. Insanity had come fast, but it came certain. I didn’t know if it was the years behind it, or if the room was simply the last straw, the snapped end of string with no time left to replace it. I knew that I had lost my mind sometime in the passing week, but coming to terms with it only lost it further. I wanted to be surprised that it had finally found me there in the room, but I wasn’t surprised. The time it took had been well-earned, since the age of 16. The speed of its arrival was only offset by things bigger than the room that I wouldn’t let break me. The room was only there to garnish the grave, what the room reflected was what I’d traded my mind for, to let it go without another fight in me.

I was dead and destroyed, wasted, sorry, lonely and fucked. I had once had women and people who believed in my work. I was once a human with honor and strength and muscular flesh. Now it was gone. Everything was so gone I wondered if it had ever existed. Maybe I was born in the room and everything had been a dream, a neuro-chemical hallucination brought on by flies crawling down my throat and copulating as I slept. I had quit masturbating because it exerted me, and it only made me hungry afterward. I was not even alive. I was a cell in a jar and I was being monitored by giants who had painted this life for me to live as though it was real. I inhaled deeply, closed my eyes and refused to breathe. Not because I wanted to die, but because I was bored with breathing. My body went through a cold wave and then it was dark.

It's 4 degrees. I'm near the Hudson. Of all days to have an appointment near the Hudson. The wind is unstable, wavering from 20mph to 30. More and less. The wind hurts my face. The temperature hurts my face. The soul sucking work hurts my face, shilling for things I don't believe. If the Hudson was iced over I'd walk straight across and keep walking until my bones fell off from the number 4 degrees just to thumb my Numb cold eyes at who knows what when we're angry.

My heart

Breaks and splinters

Sending shrapnel throughout my body

My lungs collapse

Gasp for air

My eyes burn and tear

Coldness washes over

As the trauma sets in

A sort of shock

Catatonic state

Which numbs all of me

And I don't care anymore

I don't care about anything

I give in to it

Because it is easier

Then starting again

Swelling inside of me in this immense pressure. I always feel it, like a hand constantly pushing against me. Sometimes I wonder if I'm living life correctly. I think that maybe I need to do something more, something extraordinary. Going through the everyday motions gets boring quickly. I want to scream for somebody to come and save me, but no one ever does. Eventually, the pressure builds and builds and builds. Then pop. I explode. I become a canvas covered with the color of numbness. I no longer feel anything. My emotions have abandoned me. Now it's only my shell that's left.

The hit connected like solid gold bar to the bridge of his nose--smashing it flat and cracking it like a twig under the pressure and force of my clenched fist. I stepped back and threw a left cross, landing it on his slack jaw. I saw his eyes glass over, his mind and body going numb from pain. He dropped, the cut strings of a marionette, landing in drunken sweaty lump on the dirty blue beer stained floor; his girlfriend yelling and screaming at me:

"You killed him! You killed him goddamnit!"

"All he needed to do was show me his ID," I yelled, shouting over Van Halen's 'Hot for Teacher' as it blasted over my right shoulder from the PA.

I bent down to pick him. His biker bitch spat on me, then pulled off a spike heeled and took a swing at me. I blocked, then connected with un uppercut that lifted her up and off the dance floor, dropping her about 3 feet back onto table, breaking it, pitchers of beer flying, patrons yelling,"What the Hell man!"

I shouted, "I got your next round!"

Now I had two bloody drunks to clean up. I bent down to pick up the little woman as she came out of her punch-fight haze. Confused,

she looked up at me, her mouth and teeth bloody and trembling, "Don't you know you're not suppose to hit a lady?"

I replied, "Where I was standing I didn't see a lady."

Always remember that numb is a word in itself.

Numb and "-er" together make the word "Number", and together they make each other feel complete, such as your lover may make you feel complete. But remember this: Numb can stand by itself, and it's still a word. "-er" cannot. It must be attached with something else to be complete. You are Numb. and they are -er, and you can support yourself with out -er's help.

(I hope I made sense (: )

The faces.

The looks.

The rain pouring down.

The hail that pierces my skin.

The gazes

The sneers.

The tears in my skin.

The rips in my clothes.

The prints left behind.

The long string of words and the hearts left behind.

The world, now feels Gray as the sun hides away.

I am numb.

I am lying still,

slightly sunken

into the snow.

It's the fluffy stuff.

Light and buoyant.

Memories of sled rides

down sloped

back yards

evoke no emotions.

Memories of

calm lake water

so cold on my toes,

slimy rocks

and sweet smiles

leave me numb.

Life is a phantom limb.

Numbness is like colorless, lukewarm gelatin. You can't nail it to anything, it's too soft. Yet, swimming in it wouldn't work either because it's definitely too hard. It doesn't look like anything, smell like anything, sound like anything, taste like anything, FEEL like anything. Except that's really a lie. Because if you're focusing on "feeling" numb, you're actually concentrating really hard on trying to repel all of those other emotions. Which can make you "feel" a lot of stress. Just saying.

I am scared.

It's been a week since my surgery-- part of my throat is gone, and they took some part of my nose or air-tubes, or something. Supposed to help me breathe better.

But I can't feel the air anymore. When I breathe, IF I'm really breathing at all, I can't feel the rush of cold air. I can't feel my lungs fill up and empty like they should, like they always have. It's been a week, the anesthetics should be long gone...

But I don't know if I'm breathing. My lungs, my throat, the air has gone numb.