I avoid the mirror, the bloodshot eyes stained from the tears brought by years of frustration,
I look instead inside, searching for an answer, a reason.
Some sort of justification. Anything.
The energy it took, the agonizing pain I forced myself to get past or swallow or get through, the stench of my own flesh decomposing, rotting away on my legs…
So many times I could have stopped fighting, so many times I wanted to.
It wouldn’t have taken more than a few weeks until I went away, and if the pain got too unbearable I had the pills stashed.
An hour at most, into one last dream –
and then nothing but a name
forgotten in time.
But I had hope. I believed that things could be better.
That they would be.
How wrong I was.
So now, I search inside
for the passion
the rage
the anger
that i have found
and hold so dear
I search for the love,
a reason,
a purpose…
but these past months
the deeper i go
the less i find and
the less i find a reason
to go on.
Seven years since I left the hospice, seven years fighting against the current, trying desperately to make it to calm water…
and for what? For THIS fucking life? This life, where loneliness eats away at my heart, where I seldom know where the next meal is coming from, where I can’t even pay my bills.
This is not what I fought for. Not what I lived for – and I can’t help but think, at times, that I made a mistake.
But here I am. If it was a mistake, it’s already been made, and it’s far too late to give up now.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll sell some jewelry, maybe I’ll soon finally be able to buy a car so I can not only do the things I need for my business to make it grow, but escape this city and just drive until I find a place – a beach or forest somewhere, alone, where I can find my heart again.
Maybe.
of Petals & Thorns 