text: I like being barefoot in the cold. People always stare at me awkwardly, when I start peeling off my shoes and socks to walk across a frost-laden pitch of grass, but they wouldn’t if they just tried it. Society only tells you it’s not okay to go outside with shoes on. It’s actually an entirely novel concept, really; I’d rather focus on my feet freezing, than sit back idly as my night travels in reverse. I don’t think I sleep well anymore. I always feel tired; like the coffee I had last night, doesn’t want me to drink the coffee I’ll drink in the morning. And I’ll roll over in my bed, and that sting of the familiar pain in my side shakes me so hard I can’t go back to sleep. And the feeling of my heart, almost burning, with every few beats, scares me enough to get out of bed and drink some water. I’ll go outside, instead of having coffee, in an attempt to offset the ritual that lead to my dismay. Walking barefoot into the yard while I’m smoking, just to let my mind travel somewhere else for a while. And then I stepped on that fucking dart. The serenity of chills is met with the sound of anguish, and my scream pierces the early morning, and I’m left wondering why I ever threw that dart out the window. I hung a map on my wall, and I blindfolded myself; just to throw a dart, and see where it’d land, well, it landed in the yard. I threw the dart to see where it wanted me to go, and through the bitter irony, it ended up being what stopped me from going anywhere. Because now there’s a dart sized whole in my foot. I don’t think I think anymore. If I had been thinking at all, I wouldn't of went into the back yard barefoot; there’s so much dog shit out there. I think, through out the course of the last hundred years, all anyone ever wanted was to be listened to. To know that their sorrow was heard. I wake up, and my side hurts every day; I’m too exhausted to run, because I don’t sleep well anymore. After drinking coffee all day, going to bed, is comparable to sleeping on something incredibly hot and itchy. Yeah, you can manage it, but you have to stand up every forty-five minutes to scratch your balls and cool off. My heart hurts after drinking so much coffee. Sometimes, enough that I contemplate going to the hospital, but then I remember that I don’t like hospitals anymore; that if I walk in there, complaining of heart pain, I’d probably be locked in a room for four hours until I stroked out all together. Yeah, I don’t like hospitals. This is my pain. And I carry it with me every day, along with seven cup’s of coffee and two red bulls. I feel like I’m slowly killing myself everyday, and I’m screaming in torment at the wall; no one hears me, and I don’t feel heard. I feel muffled. The pain in my chest and coffee cup in my hand tells me I’m not being dramatic, but reality taught me a long time ago, that help doesn’t usually ever come. And I don’t know what to do, because this life leaves me feeling empty and void, and in a significant amount of pain. I just don’t want to drink any more coffee. My side hurts.