Surgery Without Sutures

How many seconds left?
How many years?
How long remains until everything I've known, everything I've loved, anyone I've touched disappears?

There will come a day when the world will never have known this face, this name, this body, this brain
Is it any surprise that sometimes I'm short of breath?
That I find solace in being alone?

Where safe and protected with armor selected to deflect thе world and to maintain control, I can lay quiet and restrained
Immobilizеd by a threat that won't fade

Self-contained, self-aware, self-absorbed, self-persevere
Individuate to survive, then isolate
Try to stay alive at any cost
Lost and terrified
Ignoring the heart and killing the mind
Unable to find real peace inside
Tattoo this body and tear apart my brain
Diminish the strain in any possible way
It's safe to retract than act. Protect, intact
Suppress reaction, embrace inaction
Protect and defend. But still ignore the end
I lie to myself vitally
I lie to myself
It's all lies

Trying to convince myself that it's okay, that almost having everything meant that I never had anything at all
But I know my eyes reflect the truth
Every moment counts me closer to zero and I am desperate. Desperate to hold life in an embrace, instead of at arm's reach

I am recast and adapted by all those around me
Shifted and moulded into someone and something I no longer recognize
I feel linked, yet alone
Regret like ice, piercing me
Convulsions from imagining what could have been
But regardless of every hand that slips away forever, I'm hoping someday to hear whispered these words in my hour of deepest pain:

"You are very much so alive, in a way most people would never let themselves be."

With every beat of this slowly dying heart:

To make the choice
To be set free
To be here
To be with you
To be afraid
To be ignored
To be embraced
To be unsure
To be erased
To be touched
To be shared
To be damned
To be scared
To be shunned
To be absorbed
To be wanted
Absolved
Unloved

To be unknown
To be inescapable
To be in awe
To want it all
To have it now

To be alive