Unbroken, rebuilt, cast with wood to hold us upright. We’re ugly machines running from ghosts that don’t exist. And I’m greenhouse transparent, filled with fog, heartbroken with a garden in my stomach. I’ve been made a monument that no one will ever see. I told you once that you’d forget me and I’d fade out like the wind. Well, here’s a ghost who never died, a haunt with the hands to move whatever fate brings my way. A toast, to the day I found myself invisible to you and no one else.

       An empty coffin in a hole dug to house it. What am I supposed to believe in? Is there a greater grace than I’ve seen thus far? I’m not sorry for the things I’ve done, this is the life I’ve built for myself. And to regret this all would be a waste of time. The past doesn’t exist outside the reels I’ve made in my memories. You can run, flee this god forsaken town, but these lines will never be unwritten. You’ll read them over and over, and I’ll be dead no more.

      We don’t need to be whole, I don’t need a saint on my shoulder to guide me. The path is already worn through the woods. The snow has fallen and disappeared one thousand times before me and will do so after I disappear. The world will keep spinning long after I’m in the ground. So to leave this alone, to give up now, wouldn’t change a thing. Save me or burn me, I’ll find hope wherever you’ve buried it. All my fortunes will tell of a traitor, I’m fated for doom. And if you still think me a monster, I’ll make it so. I’ll become a bastard to make sure you’re right.

      The smoke makes me real, the drinks make me believe. I’ll live a life in the gutter to prove what I’ve become. And come daybreak, the world will find another man haunting his own heart. As far as I can see, there will always be a horizon to find. Beyond that there’s nothing stopping us. We could have run from all this, we could have found a better way. I needed you to breathe the air back into my abandoned lungs, but you stood upon my chest instead.

      I keep finding ways to write the same words over and over. Because they’re all I believe in now. The same message, a thousand times. When I sleep I see nothing but fog surrounding this house, and you’re out there, far beyond the always falling sun. If for an instant I believed you’d be happier if I was missing, I’d give up the coward of a ghost inside me. I wish somehow I’d said more, but there’s already a grave full of sentiments that never lived past earshot. So I guess I gave it hell, and hell is all I was returned.

      Should a lark come to call, and I am beckoned to the sea, I’ll walk towards the ocean until my heart is in the deep. Swept away by a tide that never bothered with love. The sea has never felt the folly of man, but it will make me a son. I’ll be held by something that knows of loss, and she’ll take me away from here. I should have showed my hands to the water long ago. Maybe then we’d be okay, maybe then we’d have lived a different life.

      This invisible man, this bag of broken bones, is finally finding a way to settle the storm he’s called above his head. Let the rain fall, and the thunder will play us out. I’ll have an orchestra at the end, and the trumpets will sing me home.