an empty mind is nothing but a corpse

   buying memories out of an old cardboard box left in the corner of a flea market stall and playing them on film reels behind tired eyes



   old bodies dripping with liquids that drip and spill, machinery creaking and failing and the lights blinking red, red, red, error, error, error



   a brain bluescreening and shutting down down dow



   plastic limbs left on the concrete, found and collected into a pile, driven to the factory and melted down down down, reshaped into husks

an empty mind is waiting to be filled

and we’re not corpses but we still rot

   bone-white flowers waving on too-thin stalks blossoming from eye sockets, leaves falling into tepid pools and rippling in the ever-present rain



   washed-out faces and cold hands left in darkened lakes, moss and lily pads grasped in weak fingers, skeletal figures reaching towards the distant shore



   echoes of voices crying out to the stars please please plea



   lichen and mold etching spirals and spiderwebs into blue-tinged skin up across blank eyes and out through gently floating strands of hair 

and we’re not corpses but we’re still dead

and the rot is all we have

   cracks in the walls of abandoned buildings and shattered windows, glass littering the floors, shining in splintered fragments



   carpets of dust coating the houses, swept up into tornadoes by roaring winds, tearing withered planks from walls and floors, faded picture frames left on the mantle



   a dry and scorching breeze whispering come back come back come ba



   mud and puddles forming mush with dirty snow as the clouds grow dark and heavy, they drift away and the sun is nothing but a burned out spot in the empty sky 

and the ash is all that’s left

(zysia- [n.] the sense that you were born too early in history, all too aware of how crude and backward the present can be)