Save for far-fetched plans of escape conjured in the wee moments before sleep, nothing significant ever happens in this stepford-y suburbia. Sometimes, I catch glimpses of people slaving away in meager jobs they’ve been both stuck and contented in for years and I think to myself “this will not be me,” but I find small comfort from this intent to digress.

It is achingly honest to own up to the cliché: I have lost myself. Just yesterday, when I read through Random Muses and Nostalgia, I asked myself: what has become of her? When did I lose her? And how? And why?

But too often, I feel too sedated, too resigned to look for answers. And so I resort to think of things that are more practical (practical - something I vowed never to be during my days of staying hungry and staying foolish): finding a job that will pay the bills. 

nothing invested nothing gained

You have joined the fleet of the ephemeral, and I have decided not to think of you. Save for the brief moments in the wake of delayed buses, the interval between thought and sleep when I see your face across me like an apparition; a dream.

All day I am a dead man walking, in this plastic suburbia where nothing means anything anymore. Where people knock and run, before I could even open the door. 

They say it’s always greener on this side of the universe. They forgot to tell you about the beast that kills dreams living under the fake grass. They didn’t tell you anything about hanging out inside your closet for silence, to muffle your cries between the clothes you have folded and refolded countless times for lack of better things to do. No, nobody said anything about the hollowness in your chest, like a scene from Death Becomes Her, except more real, and less funny. Like something has been ripped apart from your body. Your heart, was it? Your soul? Something. And you always feel like talking to someone, but there is often no one to talk to. And when there is, you find that the voice inside you had shrunk to the size of your heartbeat: close to nothing.

The second you locate the specific emotion amongst the terrible medley of melancholy, you find that none of your fingertips can feel and you wonder whether this is the only consolation of sadness: the chill in the wind that turns you numb.