Nothing at All

Last night I had a dream

I pulled a thin red string

From a cut in my thumb

And I don't know what it means

But I wrote it down all the same

Cause I got nothing to say

Yeah, it all sounds the same

Just a cloud of dust

Behind some run-wild dream

I'm exhausted, I'm ashamed

I used to stay home from school

I was a scared little boy in that room

Then it was bottles or cans

Whatever I could get my hands on

Now I'm back in that room

Back where the memories linger like feathery footsteps tapping out of time

Back where my brother would scream till he'd bleed and my mother would quietly cry

Back where I climbed from that cage and kept climbing, it's cages all the way up

And I ain't proud of knowing that I'm growing used to this one

I feel nothing at all

I'd rather stare at my phone

Leave the TV on

And don't ya turn on that light

Ma, ya ain't gonna like it

Your baby is gone

Gone like a stone that's been thrown and forgotten, lost in a sea of itself

Gone like my father, and gone like his too, and gone like the anger I held

Gone like the feeling of anything meaning anything more than it felt

Though I ain't glad to go, I ain't sad to know it now

I feel nothing

So where did I go?

Did I slip out the door?

Did I float through the ceiling

Or fall through the floor?

Where was I before?