I pick at the scabbing wounds that cover my legs; they were new but had already found their brittle form stuck to me. I try to think of when the gristly desert first fed into my tanned skin. Since then, whenever it had been, it had spread. Out here in the middle of nowhere it seemed to go even farther than distorting my physical appearance though. The scabs may have not been the cause of my mind flailing into a void, but whatever caused the scabs was surely causing my mind to simulate acid as well.

   I couldn't think straight; the heat shivered in front of me and the trees danced in unison with the tumbleweeds when the rarity of a breeze came by. I was sitting where the guy I hitchhiked with dropped me off. I was in what could be considered a ghost town; an abandoned gas station and an old farmhouse behind were all that was visible for miles. You could tell it had sat dormant for the longest time because the drained gas pumps still had glass tanks on the top where fuel once sat and in front of the boarded up store there was an old dog skeleton picked clean by buzzards and wildlife that probably came out to creep at night. Around the sad looking dog's neck was a collar and tag that meant he had most likely been a pet. I tried to find a phone number inscribed into the tag but instead found that the tag was too worn to see anything.

  I gave up on trying to find someone to contact about maybe coming to give me a ride. There would surely be someone coming soon enough, right? Somebody had to be driving down these burning blacktop roads that could pick me up. I was hot and regretful, yet I sat hopeful of a stranger that might pass by. If I had ever needed God I needed him now to save me from this horrible situation, so I prayed that he'd send me a willing car to take me from the grasps of this cracked land. 

   I felt I was proven wrong in the course of the next day. I had drank nearly all of my water and was working on suckling the last drops down like a dehydrated rodent of some sort. The scabs had gotten worse. I could feel them hug my shoulders and grip my feet; they had invaded nearly my whole body by the second day I was here. What was even more strange and slightly morbid was the dog that had a beating heart sitting inside its sun bleached skeleton. It didn't scare me; in fact, everything was calm except the scabs that pulled at my skin and left me nearly going insane. I could feel the scabs start to froth my face and set in like concrete. Facial expression was not an ability of mine at the time. Maybe I was going insane. I had only been here for a day and a half but time seemed to run rapidly yet the day's sun blared day in and day out.

   Finally I saw a black Cadillac bounding down the road towards me. I jumped up and stuck my thumb out hoping my prayers had been answered; and it seemed so they had when the freshly waxed car coated in dust pulled to a stop on the side of the road. I opened the door and started to thank him when I realized the person at the wheel was rotting and the horrendous stench of death reached my nose. I turned away but only caught sight that two children sat in the back of the car. They looked scabby like me and their minds were distant. The poor things were probably traumatized. I didn't think for a second how the man could've been driving. I wasn't an expert on anything that was happening. In fact I was fretting and reaching into the back to check on the kids to see if they were alright. Focus on the live people, I thought. I picked up the little girl's wrist and checked her pulse; It was beating way too fast. She had to be having a heart attack but it didn't seem to click in my mind because at the moment for her skin was crumpling up and turning to dust. Her muscle seemed to melt too and her bones soon followed. I reached over to hug the little boy, I was crying, then I felt his hand on my shoulder and murmured whispers before his breath stopped and he dissolved like his sister. I was crying so hard that my whole body ached and I was even more incoherent to my surroundings than I was before.

  Next thing I know I had pulled a dead man out of a car and was driving down the road in the middle of nowhere with kids that now resembled dust. I was scared yet I felt nothing close to it as I drove down the road looking for something that could help me; I didn't quite know what that was though.

I find that my life is a constant change,

always in the midst of gray,

it is never black or white,

it is the gray area in which I live to tell my tale of blithe.

I live in a gray area where the songs are remembered the only way I know,

With words crossed in ways that higher authority tells me are wrong,

but I say no.

My conscious mind knows these things have never changed,

but instead people spill different colors into my white, innocent paint.

Making grays that disorient me to my current ways,

they leave me in a drunken daze.

If somebody could rescue my departed soul from the wrath,

of the twisting mind games of this life affecting craft.

One; alone, 

I; one,

but,

I am zero to ten.

The sharp snowflakes fell on the hood of the antique Cadillac, the brush of the midnight air painting in the finest details of stars. Yet none shone as bright as the distant city's glowing street lamps, forming one clashing, throbbing color from afar. The Cadillac was not of a higher title, rather than a rusted piece of metal that carried a woman named Mary and a man named Joe. Joseph went as fast as he could toward the glow, careful not to slip on the black ice. Mary bit her lip and yelled at Joe,"There's no time to go anywhere, pull over before shit happens!" Joe looked back quickly as he pulled off the highway with a jerk of the steering wheel. Joe went to the back seat to help Mary but she in return screamed at him in a shrill voice, "I'm not messing up my car you damned idiot, get out the blanket and help me onto the snowbank!" and so Joe did, afraid to reckon with an angry woman that had threw a television set at his head days earlier. As Mary pushed trying to deliver a baby, a motorcycle gang pulled off to where Mary and Joe sat. One of the motorcycle riders got off and grabbed a medical kit from the leather bag that sat at the back of his bike. He was a doctor. Together a pissed woman, a man named Joe, and a off duty doctor that shouldn't have been riding a motorcycle in this weather delivered a baby. Mary named that baby Jesus, to show his Mexican roots from her side of the family. So the wise motorcycle men, Mary, Joe, and newborn Jesus sat in the street lamp's light on the side of the road. Then Mary said in the plainest and blandest tone possible, "God told me you was going to be hard to deliver you."

Why do I throw around words that don't mean anything,

yet seem to leave a lasting mark on almost everything.

Why do I speak with such disdain of nothing but calm strength.

Why do I? 

I don't really know.

Maybe you can look into the creases of my mind and tell me so.

I sat at my mother's bedside, her stony eyes staring up at me with hate and resentment. As her only child I had been a volunteered caretaker by the state. I didn't want to be, but I did it knowing that she was dying.

I had sat there for quite some time, this was the first day I'd been with my mother since I was 16 years old. At 16 I walked away from the house, Mother didn't care, so I did it. At 17 I aborted a child, Mother sent me a letter saying I was worthless. At 18 I was sad, alone, and coming off the biggest trip of my life, and I was hitting the ground fast. My mother was 60 when I was 19 and sober. That is the year I took her in, and unlike a sad puppy, she was still the drunken mess I had been raised with, just that this time she had Alzheimer's and severe bipolar disorder that she could not control at all. She had lost control and even though I was there I couldn't take a hold of it.

I didn't talk to her, the only communication was her screaming that I was shoving pills down her throat and spilling water down her chest. I did this daily for the next week. I did this with her food and water as well. As for her excrement and urine, I couldn't get her to use the bathroom or the bedpan, so I had to fight her to remove the excrement from her underwear and left the urine to dry into her pants and my favorite chair. Life was miserable, I was working at McDonald's and barely affording to buy Mother everything she needed to survive like a baby waiting for its bottle and then of course breaking down because it hasn't taken it in the four hours you've been trying to get her to.

One day I came home from my first shift and found the door to my small apartment open. I grabbed my phone from my backpack that held my work clothes and walked in, grabbing a pair of scissors sitting on the couch as I moved. I went through the door and saw my Mother cooking something. I looked at her, dumbfounded and angry that she just "all of the sudden" could be a grown up. I felt flushed and yelled at her,"Where were you!" She looked at me over her shoulder and smiled, "Right here honey, I'm baking your favorite, chocolate pancakes." She waved her spatula in the air like a finger being waggled at a toddler. I felt sick. I ran to the edge of my balcony and puked. She walked up behind me and said,"Let me help you dear." I didn't glance back at the woman who looked identical to my lifelong worthless Mother, I just spoke slowly. "Who. Are. You." Your mother of course!" She replied, and patted my back hard, sending me flailing over the edge of the balcony.

Invisible,

like a dog chasing its tail,

I try to break the chains of a never ending brain game.

The rein cannot end,

to many fixes and braces were made from the chain,

so forever I will feel the rain.

Wrapped around the beat of a routine so hard to breathe,

so hard to keep away,

yet I don't want to stay.

Many have come and gone,

passing on their way,

getting caught on the endless frays,

of my human like vulnerability.

A walking wall of susceptibility,

I continue on through many,

yes, many,

knowing that each time another is offered,

I take it,

but I already have plenty.