Astray Runaway

A hint of misery
assaults the dew draped air
as my travel-worn limbs
seek out an intermission.
I can no longer bare
their troubling protest.

Sitting down, my ever growing thoughts
give birth to dawn.
I receive no orthodox shelter
in this wasted woodland.
The deceasing light
adds fear to my surplus of despair.

A single falling tear
joins the moisture in the atmosphere
like a baby bird
dropping from the nest
only to spread its wings
and fly.

I want to go home.
This solitude I seek

cannot be found here
and my desire for isolation
parishes as self-unimportance
calls out to my name.

But as night comes to rest
on the shoulders of the earth,
home I am not bound.
Instead I stumble with every half-hearted step
in this darkness, searching for the devil,

for the reaper strikes his door.

My eyes and nose tingle
with the sense of an oncoming breakdown,
but salty tears
won't help me here.
They only wash away my mask,
showing this ruptured being.

No spark of spare light
shines upon the wake of my feet.
No ray dares to penetrate
all that lives above me
and all that stands before me.
Hope has finally died.

With great force,
I collapse to my knees,
clutching myself
like a child does their blanket.
A downpour of utter sorrow
veils me like a smothering cloak of doom.

My breath leaves me
in one toilsome exhale
as my eyes shut tight
on this nightmare.
Reopening, I realize
this is no nightmare, all is real.

Shuttering with existence, the dew cascades
in thick sheets of cold summer rain.
Soaking through to my skin,
my body aches with a chill
starting at the base of my spine
and running up, spreading through my bones.

An unheard, broken word
lingers at the end of my tongue.
It hangs there, suspended,
not wanting to abandon
its warm mental home.
But I pray for its removal in one cracking scream.

"Help"