The Wedding Bells Have Stopped To Scream

Wailing screams came from within the room. The sorts of cries that have much semblance to a child suffering the agony of burning alive. Perhaps the cries are calls of joyous pain: a welcome tear hanging from a quivering chin -- the same way the heart clenches its arteries when a wide smile stretches further than the wrinkled surface. Optic lenses with the brightness settings too high propose no reality in which the heart won’t rip away, like a drawer pulled too far from its slot in a dresser. At three in the morning emotions clamber from their locked cage to attempt to feel again. At three in the morning memories crawl from their sealed box to infect the flesh vessel that hid them away. At three in the morning feelings escape their prison cell to walk out and grasp a stable mentality in their gnarled fingertips. Scar tissue grips at thin sheets, razors ripping holes in the fabric as the greedy need for a peaceful rest inches its way into the frontal centers of consciousness. The will to live outpowered by the wish to perish; flesh and skin blooming while metaphorical muscle mutates into onyx pudding. Limbs pull and push, separating and screaming as the hauntings heal the hurt; a staple can hold things together, but first it must destroy a bit of paper to do so.