shades of red

vermillion red;

What drives people to the brink of becoming emotionless?
To the point where feeling angry is better than nothing,
where you will accept someone looking at you with pity,
because that means they acknowledged your existence, no?

What do you call the feeling that clouds over your body
after you've cried for an hour or two? —
where you feel so barren, empty, and lifeless inside that you cannot
produce a single tear — a physiological component of what
makes you human, and you can't even do that?

Or perhaps when your cheeks are flushed, your eyes too
heavy to pry open, your mind thumping with a headache,
as you cover your head with a blanket?
Because you're too ashamed to show others
that you've wasted an ounce of emotion that
was once there.

When's the last time where you wrapped your
hands around another body and felt them
extending their lifeline, reaching out for yours?
Or were you simply embracing a structured, functioning
organ system?

Maybe, that's the thing. As humans, we need
to empty ourselves into the dust particles
that maneuver between the space of our eyes
and the world?
After all, aren't we made out of the same atoms?
Isn't that worrying? Do we place these
existential barriers between us and any other
creature due to our conscious mind?
Yet if we disassembled each other to the
last molecule in our bones, we'd find the
same disappointing result.

Rose stared at her ceiling, hearing the
wind whispering a lullaby underneath her ears.
As she lay there, she wondered — did her parents
sometimes stay up thinking about how everything
they once built can be reduced to ash?
Or does that shrink any motivation that
pulses in between each blood vessel?

You wonder, is any of this real?
How can it be real? When people are capable of
loving you so fully, almost suffocating you
with the complex blend of love and admiration,
but then flick you into the warping unknown.

Here, she can run her fingers against the
wall, and hear the raindrops slide down the
roof and onto the ground. But she can also
hear the raindrops fall onto the cheeks of
people who don't have any wooden arms protecting
them.

You begin to reflect on this; what part of my
genetic information allowed me to have this
very moment in time, while another suffers?

Pathetic, it really is.

With a sigh, Rose rolled to her side.
She pulled the bed cover to her chin,
and traced the edges of her pillow.

Goodnight to you, and whoever
decided to play this sick joke on us.