when yellow leaves or none or few do hang

Is this what it all comes down to?

I should have thought more about this day while I still had some time.

It was inevitably going to come, why hadn’t I thought or prepared for it at all?

Shouldn’t we all prepare for it?

It’s the rain that scared me and brought to mind the wretched memories of my petrified past.

Reminiscences no human being should ever have to live with resonated inside my young, exposed and tormented psyche.

The downpour pounded harder and harder against the glass and I barely recognized my foggy reflection.

A sting of guilt pierced the pit of my stomach, churning the fluids as I played over in my head where I was and why I was there.

I didn’t want to be left in the car, but I didn’t want to go where it was taking me.

The vehicle turned left onto the unmarked road.

The day had a bleak grayness to it, with gaunt thundering clouds weighing heavy on the sky.

I turned to look at my suitcase.

It was small and carried  my few personal belongings.

Just looking at it perverted my mind recalling past events.

It had been awhile since I’d spoken about anything.

The trauma was so deeply embedded inside my cold dead heart that it consumed my entire being and became my existence altogether.

My trembling hands reached for the metal handle, I could see my skeletal lifeless eye sockets staring back at me in the window’s reflection, gazing blankly into oblivion.

That was me.

“We’re almost there.

You are going to do well here.

I know you can recover.”

She spoke with such dreariness.

In reality the woman was clueless and she didn’t care or understand.

When she looked at me she just saw a small glimpse of the aftermath of a fallen human nature at its nastiest.

The monster inside me I just loved to deny.

It stalked and bit slices out of my life, always returning to strike again.

The monster intoxicated me.

It was me.

Even as I bled and hobbled, I preferred to believe that nothing had happened.

I had fallen victim to the blinding numbing disease that we all have.

Only mine had just fully culminated.

I was convinced there was nothing wrong.

But the sickness took over.

The ailment imbedded itself in my twisted heart while my chest swelled with pride.

Its chains tightened in unconscious slavery.

Her mind was too protected to know what was going on with me.

She drove pleasantly down the old familiar road lined with twisted skeleton trees that stood like hollow carcasses.

She had an apathetic view in mind for my future, feeling a sense of self pride, I could see it, and she wore it.

What help could she possibly be to me?

I was brought there because I was very sick.

No illness could stain as crimson as this ailing sin.

It would spread, surely it would spread.

I was no match for it; the wages would murder me.

First I was unaware of the monster, the infection.

But a light exposed the leprosy of my heart.

I tried covering the infirmity with excuses.

Nothing could hide the putrid blemish.

They said the place would make me better, but they didn’t understand that I wanted to do what I did and I wasn’t sorry yet.

I would always be scarred, never “well again.”

I was so far from where I wanted to be, never foreseeing that I’d end up there.

The car sped by barren fields on the right and left.

The gatherings in my mind intensified, the voices whisked across my face.

A silhouette of an abandoned farm house stood on top of a hill.

I closed my eyes to the rain and took a deep breath sinking back into the leather seat, eliminating the rough strain from my tense body.

How could I have let my contamination breed so out of control?

The place was for madmen.

I am a madman.

Oh God, I needed so much help.

First the sweat broke out, then clammy hands, I could feel it.

The acid in my stomach roiled.

Literally.

I wanted to open the car door but it was locked and we hadn’t come to a complete stop yet.

I wondered how I ended up there and what the hell had become of me.

I swore I wasn’t crazy, it was only once, but I wanted to do it again…

And maybe again after that.

A sudden glow flashed in-between the murky gray clouds and crackles exploded in the coldness.

The car stopped at a dead end, entering a much smaller road leading deep into the woods.

Mentally exhausted, I was completely unaware I would approach the institution that would be the rest of my condemned life.

The structure looked like it belonged at the entrance of Hell.

So mammoth and lengthy, with a colossal pasty clock tower looming down upon the lawn, casting a desolate shadow through the car window reminding me that time had swallowed me up…

When I opened the door a gust swept my face and chilled my puke stained lips.

Instantly drenched, I didn’t even attempt shelter.

I wanted to escape that place, and I hadn’t even set foot inside.

I could hear them talking about me.

They kept staring at me from the front veranda of the building, whispering.

I knew what I looked like standing there, vomit on my clothes, just taking the pelting rain.

A freak.

It was time I accepted who I probably was.

With my head held high I walked forward, slowly, accepting and embracing what would begin the new, dark, and final chapter of my life.

Here I am on the threshold of the end of this existence and the beginning of the next.

Life, how and what is it?

As here I lie in this stale chamber, dying by degrees, hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask, “Do I live, am I dead?”