Clean Bill of Hell

I wish my psychiatrist approached my functional insanity like a priest performing gurney-side triage.

"Where does it hurt, my child?"

Well... 

The yawning void behind my fallible sternum oscillates:

in one beat, a resounding ache, a pacemaker of pain reverberating a hollow harmony divested of hope

and in the next, a cavernous numb — one with the power to turn Novocain green with envy. 

And the cloying stench of impending death clings to my intrusive thoughts, a silver lining toxic enough to turn my countenance blue.

Tendrils of masculine control wrap around my tired lungs. Their vice grip stealing life from labored breaths.

A familiar seduction, as they supplant oxygen with their malice, gently whispering sweet you-are-nothings into my every pore. 

My ears ring with pointed voices, resonating with disapproval in every timbre. 

My father is my jailer is my employer is my voyeur.

By the way, will a continuous copay from dwindling coffers dent a debt acquired from trauma rendered?

Or is your humanity out of network?

Anyway, the ridges of my brain carry an infection of the heart while my ventricles pump neurosis into my bloodstream.

And a ticker-tape parade of paranoid possibilities waves through my eyes’ soulless windows, disassociation as the grand marshal. 

 "Oh, it doesn’t hurt, my child. 

The reaper will see you now."