First posted on medium 09/19/2022

Photo by Mike Yukhtenko on Unsplash

⁸Captive to the past, fearful for the future, they embrace a story vindicating their misery.

⁹They haunt the times between question and answer, born early enough to ask, but perishing before a reply.

¹⁰They are the new lepers, provoking disgust by way of blind self-centeredness, as they turn black and their hearts swallow the world — how could they not be self-centered?

¹¹They are the quiet, they are the hopeless, not in that they have no hope, but in that they have nothing — hope least of all.

¹²They cry at the city gates, between places. ¹³Their families resent them and their disease, their despair madly infectious.

¹⁴They’ve died before their time. They dream that in death they can finally breathe freely, so as to convey their sorrow.

¹⁵They are the living dead, they swim in the Styx under a silver moon,¹⁶they ceased crying long ago, they are the Gray.