//New piece//

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like it I died. What the world would be. Would it be a better world unburdened by one less person? Would the natural resources be indented by one less usage? Would my friends still be able to smile and go through the motions of their everyday life without having met me, without needing me, without thinking about me? Would the registration of births be less of one obscure name, and my name leaving the breaths of teachers and classmates, perhaps dwelling in the fringes of subconsciousness and imagination?

Perhaps, perhaps...This world is bereft of too many possibilities, too many phantom children lurking and scattering around hospital rooms, their ghostly faces buried in the thighs of the ones who abandoned them under sterile white lights and a sea of rubbery red.

But I came into existence. Perhaps once a joy to behold, a cuddly adorable bundle, an angel with wings torn as she fell from grace into earthlings' arms. In the shadows of my eyelids, I sometimes see remnants of a past life with colours and white, ivory and shimmering voices, then I open it, and everything reverts back to monochrome hues with their tongues twirled and laved over the eyes of humans.

These humans only talk about figures and numbers, roman numerals formulated in early days to count the trillions of stars hanging in chalk dust over our heads, to count the smiles and occasions memorable to the human mind, to stare in astonishment as the numbers swelled and unravelled and folded in itself in magic. Then the numbers took over the minds of humans, when meeting someone, they no longer ask, "What's your favourite colour?" or murmur adoration into the crook of another's ear, they ask, "How many cars do you have?", "What's your monthly bonus?", "How many siblings/children do you have?", and "How much did you spend?".

I think as I walk along the weary grey road, what would happen if I died today? Perhaps there would be one less person to require an education and one less person to tax, one less identity to peruse and maybe, just maybe, one less person to spend money on? Would anyone come to my funeral to say their epitaphs and place flowers on my niche, or would my ashes be gone with the wind and left to roam? Perhaps no more expenses for one female but the obsequies and the priest, and the cremation. Would anyone mourn for me and recount my virtues, or would they throw oil on my picture and disfigure the altar? Would my parents be upset and feel a twinge in their hearts and the zing of blood piercing their arteries and veins; or would they feel the surge of air leaving their twined lips in a gust of relief?

Guilt and pain hobbled along the rivers and tunnels of my life streams, cannonballs clashing and exploding the powder and the empty forces of a lacuna. I sit in front of the mirror and smile at my reflection, and no-one, not even my reflection, sees the two cretin hanging and dripping off the crevices of my smile and the blanket crease of my facial muscles. No-one can see the expensive spheres I pop into gouged-out sockets and grease with eye drops to look like tears, and the rigidity of my hugs, all of it is apparent, only in the darkness and the whispers of others ceasing when I face them, my inadequacy, my lacerations in my war with myself and my distorted soul edging and corroding with every bit of darkness imbibed in me.

Sometimes I open heavy crusted eyelids, creaking like ancient treasure chests and my quondam zest scrabbling at the ruins of my aging body and I'm awake, even though I think I have died in my sleep, I have died somewhere, somehow, and I don't know if I really have died. It's a change in state, the opening of another door for which the living is ineligible to enter, the perceptible shift in consciousness and the whoosh of breath jerked from your lungs, the one lass jitter of a heartbeat, and a still soliloquy in whiteness. But I still jerk from the dream, jerk from the death where I triumph, yet sometimes I speculate that it's a just a stalemate.

And until my Queen is won and my King trapped, I'm in the feathery realms of existence, there's one more person to spend on, one more friend and family member, one more burden to the world, and until then, I am alive...

and awaiting redemption.

---

Whew. I feel better after writing that. It's like my emotional burdens were unloaded.

And yes, I did have a dream about dying. I don't know why, but one day when I was around 6 I woke up and thought that my life was an endless dream. Up till this day, I still don't know whether I am fully alive or dead...I feel dead and empty though. Only the negative emotions get me. I may be suffering from light depression, and I seriously have to stop diagnosing every person I meet with possible mental illnesses or I might just drive myself insane with paronoia.

Shit I have to do my work now. Bye.