• I hold my still beating heart in my hands. The wound aches dully but the pain inside my heart is far worse. Each beat sends waves of agony into my very soul. I watch the blood as it drips onto the floor. Blood. My blood. The sight of it does not make me panic. The fear no longer grips me like before. I never meant to cause all of this pain and anguish. It pursues and finds me like a rabid blood hound on the hunt. It breaks the heart that I now hold in my hands like an offering to no one. No one will cry. No one will miss the one the never knew existed. And no one will remember the name of the forgotten one. The one who was always alone no matter how many people were beside her. I never really had a chance to live. I was dead the moment I was born. The crimson liquid pools beneath me and I feel my lips twist into a smile. I will finally be able to destroy these cursed masks that bind me to this prison of a body. This hollow shell of skin and bone. In my last moments of life, I feel wisdom seep into my shattered soul. Everything is an illusion. A distorted image of the truth. A twisted perception of reality that we all choose to believe. A false sense of security and hope. What is hope? A futile glimmer on the distant horizon. An unreachable destination. As the lines of reality blur and vanish like the morning fog I can no longer tell reality from dream. Am I sitting or standing? Am I here or just imagining that I am? Am I awake and writing or asleep and dreaming this? I can no longer feel time slip past as I once did. It all melts together like new snow mingling with the old. I want to wake up. I need to wake up. Help me to live.