My death was where it all began,

the volatile downward decline that sealed my bitter fate,

my self inflicted suffrage,

preordained by those who chose to be the dictators of my existence,

the wardens of my prison cell,

for once I soared free in the open air like a bird of prey,

but in the end I sat huddled in a corner like a rodent waiting to die,

begging for the separation of my sternum from its home,

but fear not my words,

for it wasn’t the dying that caused this pain,

it wasn’t anything that twisted into whatever it all was,

it was the pain itself,

the incompleteness of everything that sucked away at whatever I had become,

this empty vessel that resembled someone I once recognized in the mirror,

someone I once knew to be me,

but now all I ask myself is who am I without me,

and why do I still care….