Some pour any ointment they can find upon their insides so that they might stop the aching,
in some attempt to make all they can focus on a blur.
So that all they bottled up can flow away and stop the drain upon their life.

There are those who sit looking at canvases that they might seek to mark so many times
it would create something of beauty if it would only hide the ugliness beneath.
As if to carve some crack through which a light might shine and blot out the dark.
A light that might be found as friend or mother or lover that on the other side is a life preserver,
a sanctuary,
a single point afloat in all the world held onto so tightly
the white knuckle ride that would seem to only end when they let go.

But to let go,
                         is to fall.

to fall into that sea that numbs that crowds that never lets up.

To fall and stop so suddenly the world gives out below.

Were it not for those who hold us tight in some attempt to pull us up
there would be but one thing to stop the fall.
The people we talk with and dance with and live with can be the only things holding us up,
but those lines feel so thin that they might break at the slightest tug
so we hope they might somehow form a net,
something to catch us and carry us away to shore,

where finally
we can lay and rest.