I remember him well:

Sick of walking around,

accompanied by a dozen voices

-inside.

 

Sick of laying in an unmade bed,

in a dirty vest

-alone.

 

Sick of watching them walk away

as he held his head in one hand,

steadying his nerves with whatever

was in the other.

 

He was sick of their sights,

their conversations

and their gestures.

Their hands and feet

sickened him also.

 

Even the ones he liked to watch;

The ones he undressed

behind a quizzical brow:

They all eventually made him sick.

 

One day he reached the conclusion:

It is not them that sickened him,

but the relationship between them and himself.

It was he who made himself sick.

 

The moments of sipping wine

whilst drinking a sentence.

Smoking a cigarette to find a new way

to define it all.

It had taken his aching soul

and placed it on a pedestal

even higher than God himself.

 

But, that was gone.

They were no quick fixes,

no easy escape routes.

He had run out of words

and with them, life.

 

If he had only known

how good he was,

he may have been able to deal

with every song that should have never been sung,

and every desperate glare that said too much.

 

‘If only I had remembered to change the bedsheets.’

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