nine lives

like a cat with nine lives, i live life giving mine away.
i am twenty-four now and the years have flown, amassing an irreverent distance from times of innocence and unimaginable happiness once imagined in the mind of a child.
what do i have left in my palatable hands, but mud and seeds with nowhere to land?

my body is annihilated, its seams torn for the second time. two lives down.

far off into the distance, on the side of a world too far away in memory to recall, if you look closely at the curious patterns etched onto the surface of my skin, the road map to places i've been, you'd see love and reverence for a life i hold within these hallowed walls of troublous self-loathing.
smeared memories of fear and doubt and love and laughter over caked mortar baking in the sordid sun and times to come.
here, now, are to the remaining years without.