By: Eric Salvino

I was young, and the world was beautiful

The forests, the waters, the people.

To be young was to be wonderful and free.

Free of the pain and insecurities that surround me.

I grew older, and the shadows fell away,

The shadows of beauty.

I saw the world for what it had become,

No shadows, no beauty, just nothing.

Everyday, there is more nothing piled upon nothing.

The people are ugly, shallow, and vain.

And to me, naught but walking apparitions of pain.

Lost in the nothing, I shade and I shudder

No one for me, not even cry for a mother…

I bleed ever so slowly, from my heart.

I comes not from my skin, but from my soul.

I open my eyes

Look down…

A pool of my lifeblood.

In the reflection

Is nothing.

I shatter the pool…

Beauty is the end.