Thoughts. They are there, spinning and swirling, dividing and joining to form shapes, though I cannot make them out. The haze has set recognition just beyond my reach. I can sense the colors though…I think. It’s hard to tell anymore. Hard to be sure of anything. I think the thoughts are usually black, maybe shades of grey and blue, but perhaps I am making them that way. There is no white left – the white is long gone, if it was ever there. Sometimes I reach out to touch it, but it slips through my grasp. I then see its enticing scarlet tones for what they truly are – blood. Blood that drips down the fingers of my outstretched hand and curls around my arm like ivy. It dries, a dull brown upon my skin. No more red. Wait for more to appear with a scrap of hope that exists more out of habit than anything else. Wait for more red to appear, though I know that it will only be another lie. Wait for you, though you will never come. Or perhaps you already have – perhaps I have missed you, perhaps you slipped through my fingers like the smoke I still try to catch in vain. But I still try to catch it, don’t I? I still reach for the smoke out of a desperate desire to – ouch. Withdraw my hand, for it has been burned. Again. Every time I reach for the smoke my hand is scorched by the flame beneath it. I should stop trying – then it won’t hurt. But by ceasing to reach for this elusive thing, I would surely be condemning myself to eternal emptiness, wouldn’t I? And surely being empty is worse than a few burns? I’m afraid, however, that these failed attempts at catching the smoke are doing little to fill this emptiness…oh well. I’ll keep trying anyway – the burns are hardening my skin nicely.
The clock strikes off another hour. Its chimes are hollow, cold, like so many other things.
She sits in the middle of the circle we have formed around her, telling us of the secret sweetness she has greedily kept to herself for so long.  They lap it up like eager little puppies who know nothing, living vicariously through her and feeling so alive. The happy tears her story has brought to her eyes are mirrored in my own, except that my eyes shine with a different emotion.
“Are you crying?”
“No.”
No, I’m not crying. Just look away, turn you’re attention back to the happy girl, and don’t worry yourself with thoughts about the girl who cries for a different reason – she who cries out of jealousy. Envy is becoming on no one, and the tears are ugly upon my face. Wipe them away so they won’t see, so they won’t know how badly I wish that her story was mine. They push me away. That’s right, friends, push me away into the dark because my thoughts are too heavy. Push me away because my own darkness seems out of place. It’s okay – I’m used to feeling alone.  I shouldn’t feel this way, though. I shouldn’t feel alone, for I am surrounded by people who care. They are full of love, and they try to understand…so why do I feel so isolated? “Because everyone is alone,” he said. Because everyone is alone. Our world is so crowded that it is swollen with the sheer mass of mankind, and yet we are all alone. But maybe I wouldn’t feel so alone if…
The clock strikes off another hour. Its chimes are hollow, cold, like so many other things.
The thoughts are still there, swelling. Let them out, let them out! Oh, God, let them out. It hurts. It is madness. So many thoughts, and yet I know nothing, it seems. I think, however, that I am sorry. I am sorry that I am such a terrible friend. I am sorry that I no longer possess the tolerance that I should. I am sorry for hurting you, for chastising you when you have done nothing wrong. I am sorry that we are growing apart, and I am sorry that that notion is bringing me a twisted sense of relief. I am sorry that I am too small to tell you any of this.
I am also sorry that my feelings are always misplaced. I am sorry that I’ve been stupid enough to believe that they could ever be returned. I am sorry that you are the smoke I grasp at.
I am sorry that I am so selfish, and I am sorry that, after all of this, I still know nothing.
The clock strikes off another hour. It’s chimes are hollow, cold, like so many other things.