Not sad, depressed thoughts that seem to be 90 years old, no matter your age, no.

Quiet musings, voices that sift up through your brain like thick, muting syrup. Thoughts that pass from the slow, everpresent heartbeat of your subconscious fears to the voice of your mind's personal narrator.

Beings of suicide, making their presence known from the opaque slices of shadow on my open eyes in especially sleep-deprived nights. They don't whisper, they shout, voices clamoring for my ear, screaming fire and pain and tree limbs and rope and water and sweet, sweet rest at last.

Their screams never leave, only becoming incoherent in the presence of daylight.

Perhaps you've heard them, but not understood.

But I did. The ringing in my ears isn't from headphones or shrieking children or my sister's music.

It's from these thoughts, droning in my skull like bees.

But my sister is shifting, and it's morning already. So my musings will be paused, until the nighttime screeches resume.