I was tattered and drunk staring in the mirror;

A blank expression with a tear-stained face;

Unshaven, unkempt, the weight slowly melting away,

The bones slowly revealing their form, ready for the grave, with slapped on talcum to keep the lesions covered, wherever they may stain.

The aches, the pains, the inability to stand, fill my brow with a cold sweat that casts a cloak upon my brain.

Suffering death before I die, as before my eyes I’m consumed by reaper’s hand; my tongue fleshly covered with sores, that flaw the power of speech as I gaily patch on remedies to try and kill me slower, slipping on the Kashmir over my burning skin.

Standing in line at the funeral parlour, I am a rotting corpse and see it in the reflections of the picture of my lover staring back at me. He’s now six feet under; he too died of ignorance.