Mea Culpas

 The man gazes out and past the extensive glass window that shows off to him an endless sliver of outer space, daydreaming about Earth while fermenting away in the multi-trillion dollar New Old-World resort -no, prison- of his own design. The vast, unimaginable plane of space prematurely greys his hair, and deepens the aging creases in his face like a much-walked path. A cigar is pinched tightly between two fingers, burning off to the point of almost reaching his hand, a faint smell of liquor circling around him when he exhales, almost as if it's his shadow's breath that reeks of alcohol. His eyes burn as he sits there, but he cannot blink, or look away from the endless lover's pupil of outer space, in fear that his world will end of he does so. Media-fed emotions expand and contort within his crackling being, attempting to create something human, but instead creating something that is both more and less then emotion. He tries to open his eyes but finds they are already open, tries to wake but finds he is either already awake or stuck in an endless dream. If this is a dream, then surely just the thought of the death around him and in the walls of his methods of success should rouse him, or kill him softly in his peaceful nightmare. 
   If this is a dream, then he wishes to wake. But if this is life, the thought of dying is but a bad taste in his mouth, leftover from younger years. A deathwish is to be raped by the very air you breath, the wish to pause life is to hide from death instead of running away. He has no wish to hide or run, but no wish to be found.
   Thoughts swarm in his head like moths, not a single one distinct and free from another, all jumbled and out of order as they fight to be spoken, to be mulled on the tongue of a poet for just a moment too long. But this man is no poet, and speaking thoughts do nothing but kill them. This man is what the poet would speak of in words made of ice and thorns, roses without petals and stones crushing the ever-so fragile planet.
   Going nowhere, moving fast-
   You can't breathe in outer space-
   But you can sit in booths above the moon, see-through floors, wasted in space- rocketship grease beneath the sink; love comes from the wallets of the unloved, for it costs money to be lonesome nowadays.
   Yet not a sound of the booming life interrupts the man, and he continues gazing outward like a sort of bitter guardian of the world of his creation.
   A phrase suddenly pushes through, almost suffocating him as it closes his throat like cotton, until he has no choice but to spit it out into the otherwise empty room, unheard but by the stars and the planet Earth, blue and rising like the moon in the distance.
   "Mea culpas," he whispers, looking remorsefully at the planet, drifting powerfully in a lonely reflection of discontent. "Mea culpas..."