i used to be able to feel fire.

on good days, i can remember the bare footprint of it. i can remember how its empty carcass caresses me; i can remember warmth.

now, it's not even cold.

is there ice forming at the tips of my fingers? i wouldn't know; there's only an odd tingling that isn't enough for me to bother about. am i falling into the depths of a freezing sea? i can't feel it—there's the rough sensation of resistance and the vague feeling of drowning, but i'm not cold.

am i alright?

...i'd like to know the answer to that too.

my heart is beating, my blood is warm, my limbs can move, but what my ribcage seems to be protecting feels more like a hole than something alive.

thud, thud— and sure enough, there's a slow, steady rhythm. each beat reminds me that i still exists, for hundreds and thousands of seconds to come. each beat never reminds that i am still alive, because honestly, am i?

i'm supposed to know a lot of things. yet, for every thing i know, there are two more questions left unanswered.

it wasn't supposed to be like this. it was never supposed to be like this—where people's gazes pierce through you and seek someone who doesn't exist; where every day is a struggle and you breath even though you don't want to; where the tears have come so many times that you've run out of them.

what has everything come to now? a life that doesn't belong to you anymore? a world where hurt isn't a surprise anymore and you merely blink at it?

i wonder when the innocent grip on people's hands slipped; when i exchanged the contact with strings that i've strangled myself with over and over again, until the lacerations lose their meaning and all the colour slips out of the world at once.

i wonder when the last time i hurt was. i wonder if it'll remain as a distant memory forever, greyed-out and fuzzy like the static images on an old TV, or if one day i'll remember feeling and hurt so much that tears can spring to my eyes once again.

is that too much to ask for?

people are strange. first, they train you not to feel; not to care, and next they're distraught by what you've become and blame you for it.

who knows? maybe it is my fault. maybe i was always destined to become a machine that has something wrong with its system, watching humanity from afar in a numb, muted bubble of my own.

i don't want that to happen, but—

what do i "want"?

what do i "need"?

perhaps i want to burn again. to see flames so brilliantly bright that my eyes bleed from the sight; to bathe in glee as frost engulfs me in all its wintery coldness.

perhaps i need to take baby steps instead. to allow someone to take my numb hands in theirs and get used to feeling once again—or perhaps what i need isn't what people want.

they want cold, hard, logic. they want something to mould.

they expect me to give them that.

so i will burn; give them the light that they so desire, and be swallowed by the flames.

after all, it will never hurt.

--

something to help me get back into writing! couldn't bring myself to write something more positive so no friendo appreciation post :<

i'm so rusty lmao