The present no longer holds any meaning to me.nNow and then are the same cocoon, as alien as they are smothering, as harmonious as parasitic, and buried beneath ten thousand questions and doubts.nI'm naïve to believe in introspection.nMy true thoughts are out of reach, and the person beneath my skin is as out of harmony with the personal as with the external.nHistory repeats a measure.nIdentity reveals a foreign motion.nWith a finger for each key, an elliptical melody echoes its past mistakes, selfish and consumed.nConducting fear with repeating phrases, I'm defined by its movement and I anticipate its end without thought.nnI built this house from the ground up and every brick seems misplaced, every picture seems mistaken.nEvery lonely reminder that I have company only in being a stranger to my own existence echoes backward on the wings of the most familiar trait I have: my obsession.nnAnd my most familiar traitor has wasted too many tears on a life with no meaning.