My skin rots.

  I can feel it spreading through this decaying body

  My body is not my own

  My eyes have long been taken

  Yet, I still see.

  I have nothing left but the thoughts inside a hollowed head

  And as I traverse the city streets unbothered by the monsters that roam freely

  I wonder to myself have I truly done such evil to deserve this

  I pray for salvation only to be met by an ebullient sounding trumpet

  In their eyes, I have already met my savior

  I feel hollow inside.

  As if I am simply an empty bag

  Sharing more in common with a corpse than a human being

  Even still, these legs scrape the streets with no input on my behalf

  A directionless vessel of nothing but molding flesh

  Hunters approach only to mumble a prayer and move on

  They do not hear my begging for a painless death

  Believing me to be deluded

  But I know best, this body has been forsaken

  Soon there will be nothing left

  My supposed body looks wrong.

  I should have the fox-like jaws of the other's no?

  My voice should be sweet and beautiful

  Instead, I stand here diseased

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  An abnormality amongst freaks of bone and blood

  A pumpkin in a field of flowers

  I feel sick.

  The rot is spreading, I’m sure of it!

  On the surface, nothing is wrong

  But I can see it

  I see it spreading through the crevices of the body I was lent

  I can even smell it!

  The stench of raw meat hits the nose attached to this desolate body

  And so now I look to the crimson sky

  The one with a million eyes watching the city burn

  And I pray.

  Fool as I may be

  I pray for my family

  My brothers and sisters

  My parents and their siblings

  For I fear I will still be living within this hollowed head as I unwillingly pay them a visit

  They do not deserve such a dreadful fate

  Show clemency, allow them to live within their own self-made prisons

  I pray for my very own flesh and bone once this night has commenced

  A life outside this hollowed head

  It’s foolish, isn’t it?

  In the end, we all shall decay and rot

  But I wish for more time

  To delay the inevitable for just one more day!

  Before the drummers line the streets to welcome your arrival

  Until the trumpets break the final seal

  Allow me to live in a body I may call my own

  One without the feeling of rot writhing through my veins

  A chance to prove my existence

  To let the world know that I once stood here on my own two feet and that I mattered!

  Beyond the rambling of thoughts circling through this head

  Away from the invisible rot and decay that burns under the flesh

  Outside the tainted eyes forced upon me from an unknowable figure

  I pray.

  That when church bells ring once more

  It shall be me who is taken away to somewhere else

  Lest I develop the hunger of the beasts which roam.