Like a Fragrance Gone Sour

Oh how my heart hurts tonight; it's being prodded with a pain that all too familiar to my mind. It seeps through my veins and creates an all too real prick inside my chest that pulses with every other heartbeat. My stomach aches with worked-for pain and makes me wish to just curl up and sleep my life away. Even in the darkness of evening I'll squint my eyes tonight; I so long to forget the world, forget the pain, forget the mistakes...forget the vulnerability. I stand here shamed for sharing my heart--for revealing those tender parts of my soul, the essence of who I am. Even if that essence isn't sweet, but rather bitter and tainted, like a fragrance gone sour; like an apple fallen from the tree and left to rot. Tingling in the back of my mind is the thought that I shouldn't let these dark, saddened thoughts pervade my life and invade my heart, but yet like a drug I've written of before, this sadness and subtle pricking dulls me into a romantic melancholy that novels are made of. In the distance I hear a chime rocking easily with the breeze, and it makes me want to wander down those darkened streets outside my window; get lost somewhere I've never been--without a worry, without a care. But deep inside I know that the cares that clog my brain tonight won't disappear the moment I'm sitting next to a giant tree in the middle of the woods instead of here on the hardwood floor. It all seems so unreal--these past three years. A whirlwind of change riddled with pain; foolish hearts, hasty words, things you can never take back. I suppose I had to wake up to the world somehow; it doesn't make itself kind to those who live in it. And yet, how much of it has all been my own consequences? There are so many i's in this simple paragraph--it reminds me that this sadness just focuses my eyes back in onto myself. It reminds me that the middle of sin is i--I. Me. Myself. I run in circles, my head spins; my dreams haunt me, my tired eyes mock me. My past rebukes me, my shame beats me. I sink into this puddle of water, my feet have no hold but mud. I sink, my head barely above water; I gasp--somehow I feel as if I'm going under.