The sky was pink the day I died.

The clouds were like puffs of cotton candy.

Even the planes overhead looked as if I were wearing rose-tinted glasses.

That’s when everything began to blur and melt together,

like I was looking at a Monet painting up close.

The cold, unyielding asphalt underneath me began to soften and distance itself,

as if I lay on a mirage, its watery haze gently supporting my dissipating body.

My limbs began to lighten and float away from me.

The sounds of the scuffle surrounding me became more and more out of focus,

like I was tuning my internal radio to a different station.

There was a peaceful, decadent disconnect between myself and everything else.

I knew,

in those last moments,

I had indeed existed.

My essence pulled away from the trappings of my earthly life and physical body,

separating from that which it had employed to define itself for so long,

and—with this final act—at last existed in its true form.

A plethora of strip malls,

rusty needles,

and vacant souls.

A bled-out Americana,

blood spattering the star spangled asphalt in red, white and blue.

An ideal exposed for its inherent falsity and fictitious facade.

A people left to claim a decayed dream.

A land of green natural greatness stomped out,

held captive under layers of concrete and human toil.

A life true to one’s nature never to be redeemed.

A life born in one’s DNA to be extracted by chemical warfare packaged into to-go meals.

A life imagined in the womb born to be distracted by the superficiality of modern society.

A life imagined in color lived out in black and white.

I hide behind you.

I fill my days,

my time

my hopes

my holes

with you.

You’ve become my favorite distraction from reality.

My favorite shield,

my favorite façade.

I drown in your embrace,

letting your caresses blot out the sun.

I shrink into your self

blurring my worries with the rhythm of your lungs.

You are my solace,

the pool I drink from,

my escape from the scalding sun.

The slow rustle of leaves,

the falling crescendo of water dripping into soft soil.

A slowing heart rate.

A silent stillness.

A patch of even, untouched sand.

A parcel of stretched, bleached canvas.

Existing to bear the impressions others make on her skin.

Alive to wear the world’s scars.

Her heartbeat mimicking the ebb and flow of the tide.

Her filling and falling chest matching the wind caught in her lover’s sails.

Her eyelids blinking for every human tear shed.

Her life consumed by the weight of the world.