Some people have had the life beaten clear out of them. They are not hard to find; these husks of men and women, soul-less eyes wanting for nothing. It's life that does it, it's life that wears away the joy, eroding the imperfections that make us human, leaving a smooth surface and a hollow core. I watch them as I make my way through the city, the poor forgotten shells, discarded on a shore; empty. The spark has gone, worn-down, run-out. They aren't dead; they walk, they talk, they do their jobs. Underneath it all, though, they are just running like clockwork - not for the pumping of a heart or wind through the hair; just running because that's what a clock does when it has been wound, it just ticks away until the cogs cease to turn.
It scares me that life will run me down eventually, sap my juice, leave me empty. That day may come, when every morning is only a reflex action, alarm buzzing and poking me awake, not from a dream but from the still black of sleep. That day may come, yet I know - at least for now - I am alive.
I know I am alive because on the inside I am haunted, inside I am cut and bleeding, in here I lay dying. Demons keep me up at night, blaze through my dreams, blood boiling and pistons churning. My rage and my anguish are enough to stave off the threat of emptiness, starve the parasite of apathy hungry for my indifference. I know I am alive because the blades of my past are sharp enough to jolt me from a vacant reverie, violent enough to battle the stubborn ennui of days as gray as pavements.
I know I am alive because there is a ghost in my shell.
