feel lost within’ yourself,

it’s scary
because you attack yourself,
left alone in self-containment,
the blood flecks the inner walls
and you see red;
shutting out other voices,
you fall far and fast -

the self becomes as vast and terrifying as outer space,
a cage becomes a spaceship;
given the tools to survive
until you run out of oxygen,
beating yourself into submission
only to realize how, ******-faced,
a self-made martyr
floods the causeway without recourse to part the tide...
no way to progress -
to shepherd yourself through the grim darkness and uncertainty,
locked in what feels like
an eternal battle:
depressed, anxious, lonely, tired -
the vandals of personalities past and present -
come to me for round one, two, three,
wash away in the silt fragments
of time that elude me,
slip through the cracks in my brain and disappear
only to implode
when it feels like you need them the least
(because that’s life).
do you let the shards of self-pity shatter you?

do you let the tide close in on both sides
and consume you whole?

do you **** a mind that seems to never learn
what it means to love itself properly?

or do you write and hope the phantom pain,
the biting cynicism,
the bitten tongue,
and
the burning trauma
die down for the time being?

there is no answer.

or else you’d find it
tattooed on each cerebral
hemisphere,
coded into the DNA
that malfunctions perfectly
to make us each
imperfect.