I've been through this all before,
i tell myself.
I was younger and more stupid, though that seems hard to imagine.
But even then somehow I managed
to emerge whole from the ashes.
to retain my wit and passion
Or to regain these things at least.
But when faced again with heartache
It makes me wonder
can I take this
can I take this first step knowing
where this road could go?
And if I had known the first time,
could I have found the strength to go?
It is steep, and now I know it.
And even for all the fighting
All the constant, upward climbing
The burning and the crying
At the top may still be waiting,
Just a torturous fall back down.
And I can't see myself surviving
If again thrown to the ground.
I don't think i could take that.
I can't face that pain again.
I am just so tired
of all the fighting and the failing
and all the faces faking caring
all the mindless, baseless empathy
The empty words to placate me.
Supposedly to comfort me.
Could they mourn the tattered remnants of my soul
As existence eats me whole
Slicing flesh and breaking bone
Life from me leaks
And although I search, I just can't find a hole to plug
I shrivel, drip and shrink until I'm done.
A battered shadow of my form.
Last time I didn't know how empty felt.
but i would have creased my eyebrows at your pain,
like everyone else.
And I would have nodded understanding well the concept.
But what lies between the concept and surrender
i couldn't hope to comprehend.
But with optimistic rhetoric, i would pretend.
Today, a shadow, crushed before you,
I can say as fact that I do
Know the sorrows that I taunt.
And it makes my body weaker
with each step.
I know the pain that will ensue
From being mauled again by you
I know I'll doubt my very worth.
And wander, cold and bare inside.
Seeing gray through sunken eyes.
Yet I strip myself for you again,
With this dream, so very lovely, at the end.
