Life Has Become A Difficult Thing For Me Poem by Jesse Bauer

Life has become a difficult thing for me. Food no longer has a taste, colors are dull, everything smells of rot and decay like spoiled cheese, ruminating under the same pile of roaches day after day. I can’t bring myself to make a move for the door to my basement bedroom. Each day, it’s the same. I wake up, glance at that same dull, golden knob on that same faded, white door still barricaded by that old, splintering wooden chair, then look away. I make phone calls upstairs to beg my mother to slide another something else under the door, not even willing to leave my solitude to satisfy my hunger.
The bed sores have become unbearably painful, so much so that I have had to teach myself to sleep standing upright in a cold corner of my concrete prison. Often times, I wake up to find that another spider has found a nesting ground because I slept with my mouth open again. The remains from those in the past have begun to form a pile of silk and fly carcasses in the bottom of my closet.
Weeks ago, I nailed a black towel over my window that I have not been able to remove, too weak from starvation. Every bulb in my room blew out during a beautifully dangerous lightning storm not long ago. Now the only light that can sneak its way into my room is the lazy little flicker of my stereo screen.
Living in blindness, I can no longer read the good book. The only thing that once kept me sane, gave me faith, gave me hope that one day she would come back to me. And now it’s gone, lost in my sightless dungeon. I have lost my light. I have lost her. She was a light, she was a light that could outshine my Bible, could sear away that dreadful veil over my window, could scare away the spiders, and could even inspire me enough to leave my self-made confinement. She is my light, and she’s not even here to shine.