There is no cure for my self.
I will sit up nights
And read poetry aloud
And cry harsh tears as my words fall away into the darkness.
It is my nature.
A voice of sorrow lives in me
And it speaks, always.
It murmurs beneath everything like a brook.
It sweetens my days
And swallows my nights.
It is not without its merits
But it is
Painful.
I am a sad person
Always have been.
I ache, and always will.
Love soothes and frightens me
But beneath it grief runs steady
The only thing
That is always there
Heedless of any other turmoil.
It presses into me-
A small trickle, less than rainwater-
But it has carved me deep over years
Deep, deep,
It has cut caves into me.
It is the heart of me, the softness of the stone
It is my weakness and the source of my life
And I have hated it for as long as I have known it was there
But it
Doesn’t care:
It only knows how to continue
Not how to feel.
It doesn’t stop for love
Or for anger
Or for joy.
It gouges a path through all of them,
A deep, steady drumbeat
A persistent crawl
And I am witness to its slow erosion of me.
I watch with apprehension
An unwilling subject
A reluctant vessel-
For I know that as gentle as it seems
It has stripped away all this so far
And will go on
Until nothing remains.