Guilty

         I wait.  I listen.  I experience emptiness.  The dark settles in almost as a comfortable blanket.  My breath keeps pace with my heartbeat.  Still silence.  Still, the emptiness of life bears down.  A small sliver of light pierces the darkness as my eyes try to flutter open.  The dust chokes them shut; closing off even the breath that threatens to keep me clinging to this world. 

         This world is exactly what I am trying so hard to leave; this ungrateful world that has held me under and waited for me to drown.  I close my eyes to shut out the light, but now the sounds are intruding upon me.  Sharp daggers piercing into my brain the sirens start filtering in.  I can feel the hands pulling at me.  Stop.  Leave me here to smother in my own waste.  Don’t you understand that this was all my own doing?  Don’t you understand that this is my rubble?  Still they tug.  Prying my body away from the blissful demise, they place me upon a gurney.  Why save he who wishes to pass?  Why save the guilty?  I hear them talking, shouting orders to each other, grasping for tools and tubes.  It will do no good.  I know.  I am condemned.  I condemned myself long ago.  Then I ran from it.  I ran from myself and my life.  I found only my end.  They are fading now, and another is calling.  It is my past come back to claim me.