Nyctophilia

I am the fear of unrealized potential
I am the quiet despair of a refusal to confess affliction

I am the one hiding from myself
I am the broken connection between mind and soul
The silent desperation of dormant aptitude

I am a prison of dead appetites
I am a jail guard of the unknown
I am the lack of hunger and thirst
I am a lock
I am withdrawal
I am an embryonic promise of infertility

I am Judas
I am Cain
I kill that within me which has not yet been born
I am the aborted fetus of untapped capacities
Within a jar of alcohol left to collect dust on a shelf

I am the bystanding victim of terrorism
I am a terrorist to my own soul
I am the mouth of the castaway
Who has forgotten the taste of home

I am an abandoned warehouse
A derelict street in a ghost town
I am the premature manifestation of planned obsolescence
I am the paralysis of choice
I am the shortness of breath
The venom of fear
Running feet, darting eyes
I am unbounded restlessness

I am running away from me
I am running from afternoon to dawn
I am running hard
My lungs are pulling deep on every toke
Panting for breath
But I can't be sober
I can't rest from this quiet flood
So I run to deny the torrent inside my chest
And I run and I run and I run
I run until I become a shadow of myself
If I could, I would run until I become a shadow of my shadow
I run because a shadow can't exist in the light
I run to unsee that which I have seen
But I can't
So I run and I pant and I cough and I wheeze
And I cough and I cough
And I roll up another one
Because my appetite for running knows no bounds
And before the smoke has settled
I am off to the next stop
I can't stop being in transit
I'm already late
I'm always late
Because I am running
I'm running away from me
And I'm late