Empty Casing

Run your fingers along my spine, cut deeply into my seizing lungs. Make me gasp and crawl and tear at the ground beneath me. Bring me close to the sun, close enough to burn. Let me breathe just one more time, before the dagger slides all the way in. I stutter during my performance, frozen under the lights, captured by your gaze. I'm shaking but it isn't cold.

I learned a hymn to sing, a method to keep the throbbing down, a dream to imagine when things turn dark. I learned so much, but I forgot so much more. Even the perfect tool is useless in wet, clammy hands. I want to be better than ever, glowing and comfortable, an idol to the lost and hungry. I want to be my own master, my maker, my first and last hope. I want to be sure and certain of everything, calm and considerate throughout. I want to be perfect, perfect beyond perfection, but subtle and distant in my security. I dream sometimes of curling up into a ball atop a huge pedestal, bathed in artificial lights. There's a huge crowd beneath me, thousands or perhaps even millions, but they all melt into this dark ocean of people. I am unmoving, as if asleep, but the pedestal continues to rise. I know it matters, maybe that I shouldn't be asleep, that I shouldn't be curled up or naked, as I am in this dream. I know it well but it changes nothing. Everyone cares but no one can see.

I wonder if, in my dream, I care for the audience. Part of me resents them, like I wish they would melt into a real ocean, painting the huge white room we're in with this dark, murky liquid that seeps from them. I have to wonder if I hate them, but I don't think I do. I think they are shadows, memories, other dreams maybe.