Chasing Life

Do not ask me to live.
You alone
have the power I hear
to request this burden from me.
I beg you,
with these dregs of me,
do not ask me to live.

Life is full of reasons I heard,
so trusting that I sought them all.
Reasons came, like inhalations of light,
but after, in the ending hours,
the darkness slunk back in.
Each time darker
each time deeper,
as with it exhaustion grew.
All my running and racing,
leaping and bounding,
has slowed on the walk to nowhere.
I beg you, with all that I am left,
do not ask me to live.

Meaning and purpose I found
in work with the healing profession.
I worked through myself,
and then taught what I knew,
stoking the sparks of purpose forward.
Then came a time
I’ve learned always comes,
when I am not needed anymore.
The meaning dispersed into a thousand new torches,
leaves me with no fire of my own.
A healer not needed is a healer lost,
and I am lost, again.
Do not ask me to live.

Relationships they said to me
bring richness to the poorest life.
I sough them with most excruciating effort
from all of my shy soul.
With luck, I didn’t deserve I found a few,
people who took the soul I poured for them,
and offered me theirs in return.
No one warned me, none prepared me,
for the truth that came next –
throughout life, people come and go,
transient are relationships at best.
The most beautiful relationships pass
over distance, distraction, reaction, and time.
The people who held my soul,
took it on their way,
and without it I am lost again.
Do not ask me to live.

In the darkness, I wondered,
And heard it was a victory to survive.
Victim to survivor,
survivor to thriver,
and then I would find life again.
Can you see them,
the skid marks from my hands
as I have been clawing onto life?
My nails are bent and broken,
with the blood dripping down my arms.
My grip is slick as I am holding onto life,
in the dear way they say I should.
Seeking another and another and another,
the reasons all end the same,
and there they sit with their reasons
saying I must chase reasons again.
It’s exhausting
in my soul,
this chasing life
where nothing stays.
I can’t remember, if I ever knew,
why I must keep chasing.

It is duty that has me hanging here,
my least desirable reason of all.
Duty to some unknown keeper of morals
who some say “runs the show”.
I’d come to you on my knees,
I have no pride left,
but there is no ground below me to kneel on.
Please.
Drop the curtain.
Let me let go.
Don’t ask me to live.