Always looking out,

Grabbing and clutching at something,

Anything

To patch up the open spaces.

Cobbled together with scraps and other people’s “you”

Because you know of no other existence.

You can fill those holes with anger.

Or misery.

Or even the quiet insistence of compromise.

The body is flexible, soft

Eager and hungry and wanting to take whatever you feed it,

But the void remains,

unchecked, unsatisifed

and you push on.

All shambling gait and weary bone,

The weight of time and expectations, pushing on the space between your shoulders

It’s a dull pain, this, easing with familiarity,

But it keeps you static, keeps you still,

Moving without gaining ground.

The slowest of deaths,

One that comes at the hands of a tiny thousand regrets

Leaving you bleeding,

splayed across a pool of wet and crimson “what if?”