Hours and days pass with each consecutive minute.
What was once a year
becomes something less than a daydream.
Nothing has been the same
since we locked eyes
that fateful day.

My entire world became bleak and dull.
You drowned all the colors that once made me whole.
Nothing more than a simple gray
like the glazed look in your eyes
the day we first met.

You existed only to see me fall.
To some you come as a gift,
a reassuring sign that the end will come.
But to me, devilish friend,
you keep me in bed.

Just years prior, when you weren’t there,
I felt free, as if the world were at my feet.
King of the world.
Nothing could hurt me, or so I believed.

The day I awoke
in a room where my only visitor was a nurse.
She handed me mirror and said, “Take a look.”

It was then that I saw my reflection for the first time.
You were looking back at me
with nothing in your eyes.

The stranger
looked back at me with disgust.
The demon of my dreams
stared right at me,
and said, “Thank you.”

Then it was too late.
Days and years passed in an instant
A decade became
a blink of an eye.
I stood above my grave and began to cry,
staring at the place where the stranger lies.

I should have rejected you,
dark stranger,
for a kinder one
bearing lightness
and hope.

This lesson
is written on my stone
as a warning
for other souls.