There is a me that you do not see.

Behind the smiles, the laughing charades . . . there is a soul, sick, sad, and crying . . .

There is an aching lonely feeling . . . a heart just slowly beating . . . painful, each quiet throb . . .

There is a me that you do not see.

Someone who watches opportunity pass me by . . . lonely drifting, drifting lonely . . . and has no heart to cry for it . . . no desire to even avert my eyes from its long and effortless passage . . .

I wanted to cry, but sadly the tears would not come . . .

There is an ache within me . . . lonely.

I want to know that you see me . . . that I exist in your world.  That face to face the words that pass do not pass unheard . . . the looks unseen . . .

That when I touch you . . . my hand will not pass unfettered through yourself . . . that I will not be sadly inconsequential . . . as insubstantial as the lightest breeze . . .

Staring into the mirror of my soul, I feel reflected infinitely in the pieces that surround me . . . shards of the person I might have been . . .

had not . . .

Had not the world passed over me . . . had not I drowned in insufferable ignominy . . . had not I failed to embrace one living thing or touch one living heart . . .

The world sheds no tears over me . . . trapped as I am in the endless muted melancholy of rain and tears . . . tears and rain . . . each indistinguishable from another as I fade softly into the darkness . . .

I am not here . . .

Have never been . . .

Will never be . . .

There is a me that you do not see.