I can never return to that world, built by deluded clowns, and be one with it all – with you all.

I pull out the bloodied blade, flesh yielding, and wonder if death will convince people I was really in trouble. They looked away, closed their ears, never wanted to believe … and I did the same.

No, they’ll call me mad or selfish – that I don’t care for those I leave behind. Anything nearer the truth means I become a window in the great house of cards. People might realise there is so … so much less to … there is nothing.

Besides, I’ve committed the ultimate sin – seen truth. It tortures and torments, makes existence unendurable.

I’ve seen through the exhausting futility of pretending there’s a point to anything at all.

Sandcastles in waves, palaces in clouds, faces in fire.

If they could see what it’s like, I know those who love me would understand I needed to go: too weakened to live in the pantomime.

People make noise to pretend there is sound; grow rich to conceal their worthlessness, gain power to hide weakness, seek fame to believe they’re important … are worth noticing. Safe in this phantasm, they touch and feel, smell and taste … and strive to believe things exist, that there’s something. I strove, like everyone, to believe I was more than nothing. Now, enlightened and humiliated, I mock, damn and crucify myself for such naivety, hope and pathetic aspiration … and I am the perfect torturer.

There’s nothing and no one, no meaning, no you, no me.

Nothing matters. Nothing ever did.

Pointless.

You’ll have heard of someone, half forgotten now, an aunt, cousin or something, whom you saw less and less … who became quiet then absent forever. A person people stopped mentioning. An uncomfortable subject who faded to nothing in the silent screeching void.

©Gary Bonn, 2020