Be merciful,

say death!

It is a plea that I am screaming

from this place.

It is the kind of scream

we dream about as children,

where you scream as loud as you can

but no sound comes out.

And no tears either.

There is no one there to save you.

And there is no mercy given.

And so, I have died;

without actually dying.

I am a ghost now;

in a body that everyone around me seems to know.

I am a ghost

walking through the corridors

of an unfinished life.

Where unfinished business

seeps like blood

through the wallpaper.

Why did fortune favor Julius Caesar?

It is better to have died

like he did,

than to have lived

like I did.

I pine for the weapons of the past.

They are far more honest.

They do not divorce

the truth of the body

from the truth of the self.

This body is not my body.

My body is hidden in this house I am now haunting,

It was death by a thousand cuts.

Its blood is seeping through the wallpaper.

There is no greater unfinished business

than to be finished

by those who professed to love you.

By those who carried the pearl of your trust

in their hands.

I am a ghost now.

Bereft of the mercy of death.

Lost for what to do

with my unfinished life.