Bone-crushing. Moebius Strip. Fissures and Crumbling.

Bone-crushing disillusionment. Just the kind of cold feeling in the gut (fingers spreading up the spine until the mind is frozen in wordless exclamation) that, in days long gone, was tell-tale sign of the faerie folk wresting away his soul in oblivious delusion heretofore and forevermore.

Tooth meets lip until salty iron crashes the party: He was right, Eric. What the fuck are you going to do, he was right and your options are drawing in on you. Magical vanishing box, faces and vertices moving implacably inward. What the fuck are you going to do?

The Moebius Strip, alternating face but always the same thread: Will that weary strain be another hand-me-down from your brother? Is that your figure you're seeing framed in his seemingly-threadbare (loose threads only grow ever-looser) cloak of feigned fulfillment?

That busy old fool casting his searing glare and burning away the marine layer (Saccharine sweet smile: And up next, the traffic report for your commute on this sunny summer morning!); daydreams do not stand up to the reality of serious scrutiny. Chaff on the wind: it scatters so quickly in a rogue gust, dissolving tracelessly into the air. One can scarcely believe in his remembered belief.

She says: Icebergs behoove the soul / (both being self-made from elements least visible)
Reply: Fissures spreading; terrifyingly invasive metastasis. I am crumbling in these tepid tropic waters.

Would that I could fashion myself a career out of volumes and language. But that's another world, and I'm in thi$ wretched, reali$tic one. God help me, I wish I knew where to go.