Untethered

Life has become a tasteless thing;
Its textures have turned flat.
Dull has become the flavour that used to fizzle on my tongue.

Breath is still drawn into my lungs
And my blood is still dilligently pumped around my body,
But my mind has gone into a state of hibernation,
Cold and drowsy, catatonically asleep.

Now I find a numbness in my laughter,
A taint to my joy that I cannot wash clean.
I understand my tears, at least,
But I despise them as useless wet things
That cannot aid me.

All else is dust,
A vast sand dune of emotions
Scattered in the wind and then dropped,
To lie mashed together, where I cannot reclaim them.

So I am tired but do not sleep,
Am hungry but do not eat,
And live but do not live,
As a zombie lives to feast on other's flesh,
With no real thoughts of its own.
I have become a vessel for time only,
A miserable husk, a shell in a storm
Of events that rage around me but not inside me,
I only rattle, unbalanced and flaking
In all the commotion going on without.

I am outside the glittering stream of things.
People float by, their faces reflected in the water.
Their waving makes tempting ripples towards me
Like shark fins.
'Why do you not jump back in and join us?'
They call across to the bank.

'Because I will drown.'