I know you see them
red welts, which mark her skin.

Or white scars
that hide beneath his sleeves.

You turn away in disgust
Ignoring them,
like a parent with a child
crying for their time.

It is not the same.
They don’t want your attention
your sympathy, your lingering eyes.

All they want is to feel alive.

To escape a death
where the heart never stops beating.

Colors only exist in black and white,
every noise sounds like white fuzz
from the television screen.

Drugs prescribed by doctors
or received from others
have lost their high.

And everything, tastes like cardboard.

Just existing isn’t worth living.
Only the cold bite of manufactured steel
and the explosion of red pain.

Can allow those lost.
To escape, from an unwanted reality.

Is it wrong to live
beyond existing…….