Of Substance

Everything is grey.

The floors, the walls, the ceilings,
the food, weak laughter, heavy faces,
and life listlessly exists,
as if its sole purpose
is to birth absent color
and fade out.

At times, everything boils,
scorches, burns a hot, messy black,
screaming into endless caverns
that echo loudly back.
A glimmer of escape
is found in retreat to
further darkness,
where the broiling grey
cannot reach nor see.

But the darkness consumes
such flighty glimmers,
swallows up all in
damning nothingness
stretching ever onward.

Slowly, everything becomes indigo
as familiarity in escape
becomes the only life to endure.
It is still pitch in its tonal hue--
still suffocating, overbearing--
but an eerie sweetness,
an odd gentleness,
ensues.

Black and grey are
no longer bearable,
not a semblance of desire
to their very names,
and retreat becomes
the laborious air to breathe,
return but a treacherous thought.

But is it life to live
where darkness only reigns?
Is it life to live
where only solitude remains?

Everything is grey, grey, grey.