despair

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to hold on to. I sit in a shack, courteous to the elements— roofless, rootless, a snipped leaf with no moment of relief. I vape in fumes of despondency, the only way keeping me afloat in this flooded atmosphere of earthly recalibration. Magnitude 8.0 smiled at me as the skyscraper of pipe dreams gave way, collapsing inward, crushing me from the inside. I’m left homeless— a ruined blueprint, shelved in an architect’s book of scraps, stranded in dire straits I never saw coming. The shack rejects me. The wind hisses. My ears seal shut. Water backhands my body I shiver on impact. I try to walk— the earth slick, unfaithful. I slide, land hard on my back, fracturing more than bone. Pain ricochets— ping‑pong balls of fire stamping every nerve. As red floods my vision. Then black.