Times that Kill

These are the lonely times,
the abandoned times,
the honeydew-sweet stinging times.
These are the times that burn,
those gripping times whose iron grasp
squeezes the very marrow out of my hope
and leaves me naked, shivering cold,
frostbitten,
with a deadened smile stapled to my face.

These are the numb times,
the dark times,
the midnights with no lover,
the addict that drains the last drop from my veins
and feeds it to the worms.

These are times that make me loathe
the very substance of happiness:
Beauty, with her hideous transparent skin
that I could peel off in tiny strips,
wrap my inadequate hands around her pretty neck,
and strangle the existence
from that diseased, foul bitch.

These are the times
when I kill myself slowly,
minute by minute,
memory by horrid memory
playing over in my mind;
I am blindfolded yet the pictures flash
by me in full color.
I am only shown the ones that mortify me
to my core:
The lovers I’ve scared away with my inexperience,
those trembling moments when I
become motionless with fear,
the moments when I am at my very ugliest,
naked and open for the world to see into.

These are the times, I fear,
that will be my defeat,
as they slowly eat away at me from the inside out.
Sometimes they are forgiving times, and they show some mercy still -
sometimes they gnaw my flesh from the outside in.