Emptiness

The poisoned blade of emptiness breaks skin,
Even while standing amid a nameless crowd,
Where emotions contend in primordial tourney,
Like crows fighting over a bloated corpse,
And I, a husk among their fevered murmuring,
Drift unseen through the crush of borrowed faces,
A stranger even to the chambers of my own breast,
Watching my thoughts circle like carrion birds,
Pecking at old wounds hidden beneath the tongue,
While some forgotten part of me stands distant,
Coldly observing the slow unmaking within.