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Dead Flowers

by Shane Blackheart

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1.
I swallowed one even though I knew I shouldn't, but the allure of the numb carelessness it would soon bring enticed me to break my own trust. So I wandered in a haze beneath the partly cloudy sun and entered the threshold between the living and the dead, their cold tombstones a promise of what was to come. Of the peace the battle-worn crave. Graveyard dirt caked my hands as I breathed in the stale earth. It smelled like home, and my soul craved to go home. It wasn't here or there, or anywhere other than the suffocating embrace the dirt would bring. The dirt blocks out the sun and fills my lungs, and my eyes flutter with debris. The world is so far above now, and it's so cold down here. I can no longer breathe. All that exists now is silence, the chill, and the smell of stale dirt packed around me like a blanket of comfort. I am finally home. It is time to rest. Sleep — just sleep for now. The rest is but a dream.
2.
The Beast 02:23
There's only so much you can do before the beast eats you alive. You can push it away, cover it with a blanket, and lock it in a dark room. Its growling penetrates its prison, and you can hear it as if it were in the same room as you. Yet, you put headphones on and make your eardrums bleed. You shovel food into your mouth and drown everything out. You let the sunlight in and you move further away from the noise, but the beast is scratching now. You press the music into your ears as everything begins to collapse. The floor beneath your feet rumbles and you feel the biting cold of winter's wind in your bones. Your jaw aches from the tension that spreads to your head, and you still say, "Everything will be alright." When the beast breaks free, time moves quickly. There is destruction in your path, holes in walls, bruised knuckles, and bleeding wounds. You scramble to clean the blood from your arms and you think, you wonder, if it all could have been avoided. How to better contain the beast? But the beast is relentless. It exists for when the storm finally comes. The rain signals its approach, but soon, there is thunder. And eventually, lightning. And the beast is hungry for pain. For destruction. It has no peace, and it searches for meaning. The beast licks its wounds before it goes into hibernation. And you are left to sit in the freezing cold as everything goes black. Nothing exists but time and you, and here, time isn't linear. Time is long ago and it is before, and it is then. If you close your eyes, you can feel the sun on your face. You can feel your body grow younger. You hug yourself and pull the hood over your head, and you think, while in that void, "This is fine. Life is good here." "Here, I'll never have to leave." "I was never meant to leave."
3.
Sometimes I don’t feel like a person lately. I haven’t felt like myself in a while, but I really don’t have a sense of time. I forget the days. I lose track of time. I don’t feel like a person with trauma. I feel like trauma wearing a person’s skin. When I step outside or glance out the window, it feels foreign. As if I’m existing in a time that has moved on without me. Forgot I existed. I am not a part of it. Memories, visions, shadows, and haunts follow me from sleep into waking, and then from waking into sleep. Events replay over and over like a skipping record, and then I recall things I’m not sure are real or not. I start stimming, clenching my fist, and flexing my fingers in distress. The trembling starts in my legs and threatens to consume my whole body as a panic attack takes hold. I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again, and I clench my fist at a rhythm. I forget what I ate for breakfast. I forget if I took my medications. Minutes turn into hours. Hours into days. I… My brain blanks. A hole burns through the thought or memory that was once there. I can’t speak without losing my train of thought. I can’t speak of things to help me heal from them because my brain doesn’t want me to. I can’t do it here isolated in my small apartment. In the dark by myself where any small sound makes me jump. I am scared all the time. When someone climbs the stairs outside, a jolt of adrenaline. When someone closes a door or shuts a cabinet, adrenaline. Panic. Shock. Terror. I’m surrounded by empty water bottles, boxes, and trash. I am running out of clean clothes. Showering is too much energy. Something is going to hurt me. Something is scary. Something is watching me. The unknown is scary. I can’t close my eyes to sleep because it — they, I’m not sure — will be watching me. They implanted themselves into my brain so many years ago, and they watch me now all the time. I see their shadows. I watch them peer at me from the hallway. I hear their voices. Those who hurt me so many years ago. When I speak to someone on the phone, I have a moment of clarity. Then I’m alone again and it comes back in a wave. And then another phone conversation, and it’s back again. The shadows dug their fingers in deep, they don’t want to let me go. I am afraid to sleep. I don’t want to see the shadows and I don’t want to hear them. I want to rest. My immune system is crashing because I cannot rest. Their horrible words keep spinning in my head. I feel like I’m in a dark prison. Danger is everywhere. Even the man who lives next to me frightens me and I am trapped here with him and his anger. His need to hurt others where I can hear it. I just want to be a person again.
4.
It goes deeper and deeper this feeling you know of the metal against my skin padded by silicone It prevents the pain my masochism needs Why must I be punished but simply for existing but that is not the whole truth the truth, anything but the whole truth your honor I deserve the lashings and the pain And I am a pervert who enjoys the whip as it lashes blood dried against my skin I crave your drama and your rage before I can be quelled And within my energy builds like a volcano and I become a conduit of raw electricity yet it has nowhere to go So it converts to anger and desperation and lust and wild and I am wild with these things that are dangerous I curl into myself and the warmth of my red skin I place somber beats in my headphones to blow out my eardrums but the pain I feel and suffer from is no longer what is heard but what is seen and what is created in my mind Some of these memories must not be mine yet they are here to tell me they are very real and again I am the masochist, your honor I allow the pain to flow into me as it turns to a warm glow I invite the lashings once more and I praise and I praise I praise and praise you, thank you Thank you for hurting me and making me recoil from a soft touch and I lean instead into claws that dig into my skin Thank you for finding me a home in a purgatory of burning pain the white-hot pain of escape for I am an escapist, your honor I have hurt others with a blindfold covering my sight and my mind tells me justice was served when it was not when it was nothing more than confusion and psychosis So I plead guilty, your honor Bring me the delicious pain of defeat that which makes me feel wild and dissociated from reality Lick my skin with sharp and blunt instruments of carnage and don't kill me too fast just yet because my body is floating and I can see an idea of heaven but my heaven and not your heaven My place is in hell with my demons for I love them and they have shown me love much more love and kindness than those who call themselves angels So your honor, cast me down and tie me in leather Suspend me from walls of obsidian and bring your whip your claws your knives your sharp tongue your glare that cuts through my soul Leave me bare and expose my perversions and obsessions and free my ghosts as they tell the truths I hold deep inside Leave me here, your honor For again, I plead guilty
5.
I live here at the end of the world, my cats and I together. We are within four walls on the edge of reality, and no one knows what lies beyond this space. There are people and there is sun. There is a park across the road and there is a yard and cars and other things that show life. But today it feels fake. None of it is real, as this place, this life itself, is not real at all. We live, my cats and I, at the end. As I slowly become more ill, mentally and physically, I can see this strange feeling of dissociation is merely a sign. This home, when painted with the setting sun is merely a stopping point. I am in the in-between, the resting place to come to terms with trauma, memories that are as black as Death, emotional vibrations from times long past. And they hurt like rose thorns on my soul. Nothing exists but this home and these walls, this yard and this overly bright sun. The cool breeze and bird's song is about to end, for we are sitting at the end. If I venture past the threshold of my home, everything becomes a blur. I am wandering into a world that no longer exists. It is a fabrication of a dream I hardly remember so I cannot perceive it clearly. The people and the buildings, the animals, the plants, and the noise, it's all a blurry mess of a dream. At the end of the world, in the Last Place, all else that exists is a dream. A memory of what life once was. Everything is an echo from my mind and my cats are here with me, keeping the time pleasant as it passes. The shadows I see are merely whisperings of Death. And as my body slowly decays here and I gather more pain and more mental scars, I have come to know that this is nearing the end. I feel it in my bones. In my body with every breath I take. Every time my body shuts down from pain from fear from malaise from bleak memories. I realize my flesh is fragile. These ghosts in my mind want me gone. Those who sewed these memories into my psyche did so with the intent to release me. To release me from myself and any sense of self. Fearsome hands of those I loved are but specters that continue to bruise me. The wound is opened once more, and the scar cannot form. So I sit at the end of time in this void that is equally bright and stygian, and I wait for my body to rot. For I am dying slowly, as are we all, but the echoes of trauma work relentlessly. These bleak memories will kill me and they will continue to make my world smaller. This death rattle approaching from a distance, it reminds me of days long past. My memory is failing and my vision is a blur. Everything is as if I am in a dream and dissociation is my new lover, for I have always loved those who hurt me. What is real? Certainly not me, not this life, not this world. This is merely a dream had at the end of the world on a mass that is my home and nothing else exists but time. And time waits for me to acknowledge the end while Death sends shadows to watch. They know I am resilient and they know I deny the truth, and they have sent messages in my dreams. They have viewed me wide-eyed from my hallway and from the darkest corner of my room. They have greeted me in dreams and I've brought them back to say hello. They are patient because they know. So I sit here at the end of time, my cats and I, and I feel as if I am floating. For this is not life at all, but a dream of one. As I dissociate I am waking to the truth, of my body on the precipice of life, but I come back into this vivid dream, and I deny it a little longer. Here, at the end of the world, on this edge of reality where my home sits, I dream of a waking world of horrors, and I relive memories of my innocence taken, and I grow more absent of mind. Time and days bleed together, and I no longer retain full memories. My days are filled with bits and pieces, clues as to what I've done, and conversations are blank, and I only have clarity of the trauma. My waking days are filled with fragments, and I do not remember full consciousness. I cannot live in the moment for I am still in a time long gone. My body was destroyed then, and now I am a shell without a soul. I died long ago and became a ghost, and my murderers live on with a future. I am left here at the end of time, my cats and I, and we wait for the dream to close in.
6.
Sometimes 02:51
Sometimes... I wish I could speak without the fear of being accused. I wish I was allowed to suffer without it all being in my head. My anxiety is like a black mark and it's a shame that they're right while being wrong all the same. Sometimes I want someone to love me like I wish my parents loved each other, but the emotions are too difficult and my mind erases them as soon as they come. And my want for love is erased by years of pain others have caused by hands that were supposed to mean gentleness but instead brought pain. Sometimes I want the sky to fall so I can be among the stars if only to remind myself of what I wanted to be— and what I could have been— but was left with a cold void instead surrounded by light that blinds me. It cannot reach me because I block it out, yet I want it so close it burns me. Sometimes I don't know what day it is and the times and years bleed together just like the blade bleeds my skin. And the bloodletting of emotions turns black and it numbs only to bring on the silence— the silence that I fear and love. And I see and hear the voices that remind me I can trust no one. Sometimes I write letters several times a year and they end up in a pile gathering sorrow, and each letter becomes more detailed than the last and I fear their existence because they speak a truth that will bring me punishment, and I am left silenced in fear. Sometimes I wish I could communicate without my neurodivergent tone upsetting everyone, and I watch friends leave and tear me down and I am a monster with a sharp tongue that everyone translates into a meaning I did not intend, and I am left confused and filled with self-hatred and I stir the vitriol by simply being sorry. I can never climb out of the hole they dug for me. Sometimes... I wish I could be inspired by happiness rather than pain, yet I dwell in these shadows beneath the moon and they are my home and where I belong and they watch me as I sleep and I cannot help but love them because at least they are honest. Sometimes... Sometimes... I am lost, and I cannot complete the cycle. And the world spins while I remain stagnant and I die a little each time but it is a show, and I am the entertainment, and you see my gaping wounds bound in paper as if they were merely dead flowers.
7.

about

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Wandering alone late at night in the dark. Searching for meaning as your heart melts in your ribcage. A longing to be alive, but you're dead and merely staring through a veil to experience a semblance of life.

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A collection of dark poetry and short prose with themes relating to trauma, C-PTSD, depression, delusions, psychosis, and other dark subjects.

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released March 21, 2023

Some background music provided for free use by: Hainbach, Godmode, Patrick Patrikios, and Sextile. This album also features music created using Groovepad. Available on Google Play, play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.easybrain.make.music
All are used in accordance with their respective CC licenses.

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Shane Blackheart Ohio

Horror, hopelessness, trauma, and liminal space poetry.

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