It

Do you feel it? Creeping slowly inside you, howling and screaming and threatening to pull your heart into pieces? Making your skin tingle and your face flush, so that you can barely stand to look yourself in the mirror? Do you feel it?

Do you see it? When you rub your red eyes in sleepiness, trying to make the blurriness go away? How it causes you to look down, and not around, unable to meet other people's eyes? When you close your eyes and turn away, and bury your head in the shoulder of the person next to you, horrified, afraid? Do you see it?

Do you hear it? Closing your ears and screaming, trying to make the whispering voice in your head go away? Drowning yourself in music, trying to lose yourself in someone else's screams and tears? Or in the silence so loud that you hide under your bed? Do you hear it?

Do you smell it? When you choke and cough and sneeze, subsiding into an emotional mess? When you take a deep breath, feeling emotions burn the house down inside you? When you sniff the cool wind, trying to smell that woebegone smell of life? Do you smell it?

Can you taste it? That bitter taste in your mouth when you know he/she doesn't care? Or the sickly sweet taste of knowing that the beautiful past is forever gone? Or the acidic, sour tang of life clobbering you over the head? Can you taste it?

Can you sense it? That foreboding feeling of doom? That ominous thunder in the air? That electrifying sense of terror and awe? That sense of freedom unachievable, when the shackles ring in the darkness? Or feeling hidden eyes watching your every step, trailing you, haunting you, the ghosts of Christmas past? Can you sense it?

Do you feel it? Do you see it? Do you hear it? Do you smell it? Can you taste it? Can you sense it?

It is the most beautiful thing in the world.

-Asheroth-