Dissolution

Darkness settles in me like a rheum, a gelatinous mass that no amount of coughing will expel. You said nothing, which is worse than no. How did a guy like you end up in a poem like this?

I want to be swallowed alive slip down that dark hole into the cool humus watch the sky shrink to a single point of light then disappear. I fall to the ground; the earth stains my knees and impacts under my chipped and ragged nails. My hands flutter, frisk the soil, but cannot find the portal.

I pant. Choke on my heartbeat, which throbs into my hands, and now I know I can continue to claw but I cannot sink any deeper. The sky – today an almost cloudless blue – won't let me out of its sight.