Perhaps I’m not so hidden; a devilish scrawl across my face writing demons in my gaze, so blatant in their motive, burning through my narrowed eyes, undressing, and scouring the parts undressed, hot and spread like butter smiles on roasted, toasted spits.

They lied to us. Every lesson of our upbringing, so full of ulterior motive, of instilling in us the tools required to lie again to our own.

We lie to ourselves. Disquieted thoughts, dismissed with a drilled discipline driven deep into deadening drudgeries of a dying desire to denounce, to dare, to dream.

It’s all a lie. Consider this my deconstruction, stripping back the parts in place, exposing the wicker bones of this foundation, this societal full monty.

Bare on bare, let me taste the world anew, have the sunlight bite my pasty flesh and sting my eyes with the sharpness of colour, bring bombardment of sound about my ears, but sing not upon my swollen tongue the sourness of servitude.

Stop. Save this moment.

Lying beneath rain that will never fall, bright-eyed wonder glinting within crystallised suspension. Stretched out on recliners, absorbing the light of a million suns, tanning our souls a golden brown, waiting. Watching and waiting. Imagining streamers of flaring white, the diamond flourish of an icy phoenix; scanning and waiting, watching and waffling, saving all our thoughtful words for wishes, for this moment.

Far and few. Short and sweet, the sugar-licks tail across the brow, crossing out mistakes that only omniscience would notice, its marker-pen absorbed by the fabric of our covering; our real-time planetarium, complete with tea-lights, balmy air, and sprints of silver memories.

Breathe in, breathe out, the River Fowey, absorbing every ebb and flow, like the artery of a heart in slow motion.

We sleep upon its hilly vessel, marveling. Breathe in, breathe out.

Those rhythms and ripples of oceans far, tidal heartbeats that resonate from lunar chambers, delivering waves of inspiration throughout our grassy ponderer, from whence ideas come to grow.

The River Fowey, tide high, tide low, through ebb and flow, they raise, they rot, they recompose.

As every moment passes I disassociate myself from my immediate past. I remember the places, the actions – I’ve aches and reminders, and the taste still lingers in my mouth – but who was he? And who am I?

Everything’s fragmented. Memories replaying like highlight reels. Anything in between, lost. The connecting links that build this narrative, fabricated, forged.

In the absence of recollection, they write in me a story that only pieces of are true.

The more at one with the world that I become the further I feel from this inhabited form, this grand machine, so often neglected, misused, abused, and bottled potential, like some alien device we’ve no idea how to use, or for why its creation.

So we dabble and babble till we’re consumed by delusion, the illusion of reason, of answering a call that never spoke or ever cared to utter.

How distracted we become, so expert in diversions, lest the nihilism consume us and devour our assertions. These days are growing shorter and these thoughts are but contortions and distortions of a rationale so thwart by malproportions.

I can feel myself coming to, retreating from this solitude. Awaking, becoming, connected again,

but I cannot help the feeling that it’s shallower up here, further from reality and closer to the fear that every day I’m living is a far cry from sincere, and existence is a lie to which I can’t but help adhere.