My legs are molten coals. Pain plucks at my thin stringed muscles, playing them like a harp with the impact of each step forward. On the inside, from each joint of my body, drips a searing acid.
The drops had begun small and have grown over the weeks into corrosive alligator tears, concealed from viewers by my skin, that melt away at my bones. My gray skeleton seems to ache away, deteriorating and slipping straight through my skin into puddles in the dust at my feet.
Thud - Thud - Thud - Thud - Thud...
The march continues, as the wicked sun, who played her tricks amidst the snow, corresponds with deceit to my skin with the hope of warmth - unrealized.
Did I prefer her to her counterpart, who rises in the frigid dark? At least the light that rules the night delights not in her bag of tricks. She offers honesty, and life without hope, sleep in the pain, and a lampshade from shame.
Thud - Thud - Thud - Thud - Thud...
The march goes on. The frozen air, which first cut my fingertips like razor blades, has long ago resided to putting them in vice grips and cranking them, a little tighter, from time to time.
My feet have long been numb. The pain lasted only weeks, but after months it seems the nerves go dead. My face is no longer my own. Just a mask, made of rubber, like those worn by children on Halloween. It's cracked and hot human blood flows from its lips - I am an apparition.
I am the ghost and the outcast. I am the old man, decrepit and full of puss, a bloated body, yet thin as a twig, waiting for the flies to hatch. The vultures circle over my head, as I press on down the path between the earth and the underworld.
Thud - Thud - Thud - Thud - Thud...
My body begs me to lie down. "Sweet sleep - let it take you... Yes... sweet sleep, and dreams of green grass and a world without suffering." I hear it whispering like a thousand voices that overlap each other in a resounding brook.
The babble grows from subtle talk to agonized screams. "Lay down! Lay down! Why do you persist? This world is but a phantom! A dream from which you'll wake!"
I dare not answer. I dare not hear. For if I do, they will find my frigid body in the streets, a dirty pauper to discard. Like refuse, they will throw my corpse amidst the trash, and take what little value I do have.
Did I not once sing? My voice with power, my soul like fire? But now my hands are sluggish with the icy air, and the three remaining strings of my guitar - I can not even pluck.
My voice is gone, my sluggish tongue sits motionless, and the pounding pavement pleads with me, "Abort thy life, and rest forevermore."
Thud - Thud - Thud - Thud - Thud...
The march goes on...