It fades and bleeds and looks a lot like you.

I wonder if you could talk if the skulls painted on your eyes would listen

Perhaps one day they’ll invent a machine that lets the damned laugh again

Perhaps one day they’ll invent a painless way to relieve guilt.

Accident and guilt are not so very different

Accidents happen all the time

Guilt hovers like a cloud of blackened breath beneath the ozone layer

Guilt is the ozone layer

Lack of conscience eating away at is, baring the poles.

You never meant the words you said

The words that pinned her to the floor and tied puppet strings to her hands

So that when they found her the next morning she was holding the gun.

Still holding it.

As if she couldn’t let go of that last memory of you

That last pitiful shred.

You took and took and took and she took too.

You cried when they told you.

Of course you cried.

The damned always know the end of salvation.

Now you’ve gone and left your car on in the garage

Breathing in your dose of carbon monoxide

They’ll call it tragic

But you had no dying grace.

They found you.

I found you.

An anonymous call and they came with flashing lights and stretchers.

Guilt and accident.

Think about her in your clean, white hospital bed.

Think about her when you breathe through your poisoned lungs.

I painted skulls on your eyelids while you slept.

Ironic what happens when your eyes are closed;

Death comes walking.