Wings Unfurled

Words trickle from my lips, tossed out as litter,

tremors like a leaf kissed down on a river.

"Say, hey there now, what's wrong with you, Mister?"

Nevermind me, boy--I'm naught but a whisper.

Waiting for my next sojourn on the wind,

searching for an ear I might belong in.

Little scares me more than the start of a page.

Keep those raw thoughts locked tight in their cage.

'fraid to share any lines not guaranteed to shine.

Why desecrate the Earth with my desolate designs?

It seems such a waste to weave all this decay

into a time-lost tapestry that's started to fray.

Hiding from the world has become all-consuming.

Isolating from what I had devoted everything.

I find myself unready to step beyond my shadow,

content within the nightmarish cloak I so well know.

Would that the divide between sanity and seclusion

could be attained through more than a complex delusion.

I can't begin to fathom why I try this today,

when I stare in the mirror and can tell I'm afraid.

Yet, despite that my hands are twisted and quaking,

I'm unable to resist the path I've often forsaken.

Maybe the reality is that I'm simply mistaken

but I'm convinced Something out there keeps me from breaking.

***

To say I've been through Hell is an understatement.

I took the whole tour among the haze of the nameless.

All the demons I'd chained up in the basement

now greet me at the door on a first name basis.

Faced with a decision to stay silent or scream,

I guess it's about time to burst at the seams.

What does it take to shatter a dream?

Where does it go when the fantasy fades?

Does it pass quietly aloft a sunless stream,

or does the lost light conjure its eternal rage?

Standing at the edge of an infinite sea,

staring into every possible reflection of me.

The ones that shimmer in the starlight luster

are endlessly adrift from ever effort I muster

to be the things everyone wants me to be.

Success and hopelessness are such a vintage irony.

Recently, I heard someone say "just tell the truth"

and not simply in the sense of shadows and sooth.

Paint your reality with shades never known before,

transform your trauma into something more.

Life doesn't have to be a ceiling with four walls.

Bleed onto a canvas you can display for us all.

So, on the off chance someone, lost in the world,

stumbles upon this meager measure of words...

may you find solace in a single hand proffered.

Once, I never dared hope I'd make it this far,

but a life worth living is oft measured in scars.

Allow us too the chance to see your wings unfurled.

Author's Note

Hi. I'm alive.

Reviews

[Seriana]

This is amazing. I don't know you and this is the first piece of yours I've read, but it instantly pulled me in. I could feel the fear and hesitation, but also the bravery and knowledge that something bigger out there is pushing you to be a better you.

"Bleed onto a canvas you can display for us all." This line, all the way. You just have to take that first step. What you wrote took courage and you never know what battles someone else is fighting and who these words may touch.

Well done. Thank you for sharing despite your fear. The world is a better place for it. I think of poetry not so much as words unseen (as sometimes we poets think) but more art, created with words and letters instead of paints. Someone will see it, and everyone sees that art differently and takes away a unique little piece for themselves. Even if they don't comment.

Cheers!