My feet drag along crumbling asphalt beneath me as I walk
forward, my head turned down to stare between the blackening cracks below
threatening to widen and swallow me whole, my fingers scraping
at the surface while this massless, shadowy burden pulls me down by my feet
down to the depths that I wake to outrun each and every morning.

The sun casts rays of gold upon my skin as I emerge from my
nightmare, and trick myself once again that the pull I feel
is simply the touch of gravity, that the reason I stay standing
upon this aimless earth is inertia; I trick myself into thinking that
the darkness that follows me is merely a spot where the sun does not shine.

Walking beneath the intense blue of the midday sky I find
that it is during the day that my heels sink furthest into the ground,
when my gravity pulls at me with a force so violent, unrivaled
except when compared to the crippling truth that if I
turn around I will face what it is that haunts me.

Relief is the moment when my ankles are unlocked from their
heavy chains, welded from Stygian iron by my own calloused
hands; it is the moment when night falls slowly over the planet, crawling
along the edges of the skyline, dappling it with stars, painting it as black as
what I leave behind me to blend in with the dark.

Freedom is something I seldom experience; I feel
the sensation of being unbound and unchained only when the monster
of darkness roams the earth, temporarily erasing the harrowing weight that I
lug behind me, colored black, melting into midnight
as my shoulders finally relax and my feet no longer ache.

When the sun yawns and lifts its brilliant head up over
the horizon and dawn breaks with the early calls of birds, I rise to see
my guilt, my memories cast upon the wall by the light of the morning
in the shape of my broken silhouette; I feel gravity tug at the soles
of my feet as they hit the floor, my burden dragging behind me as I begin to walk
forward.