A life untethered,

The normal boundaries of society,

Unconstrained,

I toil,

No walls,

Struggle against the pull,

All the colors,

They call to me,

But I resist,

No walls,

The abyss is welcoming and dark and familiar,

I want to return to the murky dusk,

Escape is my goal,

Victory the zenith,

But it is the ideal—unobtainable,

You don’t say the name,

No walls,

The stakes are too high,

Fall into the abyss,

The ether,

There are no guardrails,

You, me, we will descend into the ink,

There are no walls and we flail into the night,

We will go over the edge together,

And into nothing and there is never a happy ending.

Fucking Rainbow Road. 

J.B. Stevens lives in the southeastern United States with his wife and daughter. He is a crime fiction writer, poet, memoirist, and book reviewer. He won Mystery Tribune’s inaugural micro fiction contest. His work has been published by Thriller Magazine, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and many others. He can be found online at jb-stevens.com and on Twitter @iamjbstevens.