consuming thoughts.

I walk through corridors that do not end, each brick damp with grief older than memory. The air tastes of dust and iron, and every breath is a reminder that I am still imprisoned in this machine of flesh that has forgotten the point of living. The clocks whisper, but their hands do not move. Time itself has abandoned me, or perhaps I have abandoned it. Days fold into nights and nights dissolve into a blackness that no dawn bothers to challenge. My reflection no longer looks back. It stares, hollow-eyed, as if waiting for me to confess that I, too, am already gone. And in truth, I am— a phantom wearing skin, a ruin masquerading as a person. The world outside my window is filled with voices and movement, but it is unreachable, sealed behind glass too thick to break. I pound my fists against it, yet even the sound is swallowed, as though silence itself has grown teeth and devours every attempt at being heard. The bed calls me like a grave, soft and suffocating. I sink into it nightly, hoping for oblivion, but even sleep betrays-- offering only jagged dreams, echoes of lives I will never live, faces I will never touch, warmth I will never feel. I have become an echo of despair, a voice calling into the dark