3:36 A.M.

‘i am not what I used to be,’ i say. it is a hollow void, a facsimile of statement, a shade of an attempt to express the third-dimensional truth.

‘i am not what I used to be,’ i say, only because i cannot describe in spoken word, in translated sensation, that rather than the sustained burning of a candle, an eternity of flickering light, i am a short-fused firecracker - and my heart and heat has already expended itself, giving way to fluttering ash 
that crumbles in the east wind.

'i am not what i used to be,’ the naivety of hopelessness, the optimistic trend of tragedy - it has all gone from me, like the leaves from autumn trees. i am laid bare, a withered skeleton, despite the greenery of youth in the crosscut of my boughs. 
i have not the spark that marks me as a child, nor the deep-seated roots that herr me as an elder. i wane and wax between the two, a convoluted hybrid that has not the strengths of the both, but their every Achilles heel. a wretched amalgam of fire and dust.

i am not what i used to be.