Rabid

Every day I wake up, and I breathe in the cold air. Just the way I like it. I never could stand the heat, maybe it’s because I put off so much of it myself. The heat disturbs me, and makes me feel uncomfortable. It dries me out and chaps my skin. I feel like a rabid dog. Desperate for water. Hot. Confused, and alone. Cold. Just the way I like it, or so I thought. Is it wrong to be upset? Or is it the way I express being upset? Where is the balance? Who am I, if not a rabid dog, tearing at my skin and reaching for the skies with my teeth. I want to bite the world, and make it leave me alone to my end. I thought I could change, I thought I could be better. I thought if I drank water, I would be able to choke out the words “I’m sorry”. All it does is choke the words down more. I want to bite the world, for leaving me alone. I don’t understand myself anymore, or if I ever really did. Do the people in my life? Do they know of the caged dog, foaming at the mouth, right in front of them? Do they know of my bloodied paws from the endless, fruitless scratching of the cage, of my skin? Do they know of the hoarseness of my throat from the endless, silent howling? How could they? I can only snap, snarl, and foam. I bite, because I cannot speak. I cannot speak, because I would only bite. Who am I, if not a pathetic victim on the leash I locked onto myself? I look down into the water that chokes me and I only see a stranger. Thin, twisted, nothing more than a snarling animal. I’ve always felt comfortable in the cold, as if the ice and snow were there to wrap me up in a blanket of sheer cold. Yet, now more than ever, I feel the wind. Where it used to soothe my skin, it now feels like a prison. It feels as though it has abandoned me, yet invited a stranger in to torture me. Why did I ever like it? I tear the hair from my head, release the blood from my veins. I gurgle and sputter on my own vomit. My body aches, groans, and collapses in on itself. Cold. I no longer like it. I am a traitor to myself. I am a traitor to those who believed in me. Where once they called me noble, loyal, with promise, there is only a dying creature lying before them. I wish they would put me out of my misery. I wish they would see a proud dog is still inside of my now corrupt, mangled form. He still howls, yet he is not heard. He still claws and bites, yet cannot escape. The blood begins to full my lungs as my head continues to ache. I cannot breathe. I cannot drink. I cannot sleep, and I cannot bear the cold any longer. It feels so cold, it burns now. I wander, and wander, yet the snow only gets deeper, and deeper. I can feel the frost in my bones. All that I will be lies in front of me. The nothingness of the dark, windy forest welcomes this once-noble beast. My skin feels tight, my mind feels heavy, and my bones ache to free themselves. I wish I could remember what I used to be, though my mind is nothing but mush now. I wish I could feel comfort in the cold again, though my body is crumbling. Who am I? A rabid dog? Or a man who cannot change? I howl, though the sound is lost to the darkness and the wind.