breathing in the ghosts of all of us

I know nothing of honouring the dead  
or those who are still alive    
   
We’re all wandering around like twilight ghosts    
I’m not here and you can’t see me    
   
All the screams are in the whispers    
as they shudder across the skin in unspoken resentment    
for all the things that responsibility refuses to own    
   
My shoe laces have come undone again    
and sooner or later the cops will come to take them way    
because I failed the suicide risk assessment    
   
I always figured I’d go out one of two ways    
by my own volition or someone else’s    
despite my long ago promise    
that I’d never stand on any precipice so high    
that I was inclined to jump    
     
Sometimes I think I might believe in aliens    
though I blame the late night pizza binge  
for my paranoid delusions  
that have me cowering away from the walls    
in the fear that they can hear my thoughts    
and will run off to tell    
... you    
   
I know nothing of honouring the dead    
I know nothing of honour and memories and beauty    
   
In my head it was all bad    
and I still fear the silence
   
© Indie Adams 2012