(in the dusk of a forgotten flag)

My brain is the old boy buried alive beneath the weight of his own sullen time and fractured lies that everything and everyone is just fucking fine at the end of the day when he lays down his head and chokes on the sweat of his breath.

But somehow, suddenly, he always survives. always wakes up to face the day. always makes it through the hours to rise and smile again and again forgetting all he can to make it up to the friend who've taken him close to their breast and said 'i love you' with a glint in their eyes only the truest shade of the warmest hearts could ever provide.

So he lets it subside. the guilt and shame and shaking terror of death at the slightest mention of certain names.

He drinks. he smokes. he raises his arm high in allegiance to the ghosts that have gone this way before and did their yankee best to enjoy every last fucking minute of it before the denouemont set in and even then they could be caught, sometimes, laughing their asses off at the situation they'd led themselves head-up right the fuck into without fear or regret at what they had done or who they had been because, at the very least, they could die knowing that they had been honest to their own nature. their lust. their yen for tasting every lowly fruit stolen from the garden of eden and left on the table in wait for those souls brave enough to just steal a bite so they could be cast down in death only to wake up ashes and hunger for one more agitation. another buck at the neck of salvation.

Fuck being saved.