give me a number,
the appropriate label,
and compare me to the rest.

set me aside for a rainy day when you’ve exhausted through your list.

lets face it,
i’m just another: nothing more, nothing less.

everything i am to you
is that which you can see.

you simplify me down
to something for your frail mind read.

sometimes I wonder if this feeling is the voice of my own perceived inadequacy?
will someone ever really just love me for me?

Haunted
by Michael R. Burch

Now I am here
and thoughts of my past mistakes are my brethren.
I am withering
and the sweetness of your memory is like a tear.

Go, if you will,
for the ache in my heart is its hollowness
and the flaw in my soul is its shallowness;
there is nothing to fill.

Take what you can;
I have nothing left.
And when you are gone, I will be bereft,
the husk of a man.

Or stay here awhile.
My heart cannot bear the night, or these dreams.
Your face is a ghost, though paler, it seems
when you smile.

Published by Romantics Quarterly. Keywords/Tags: haunted, ghost, thoughts, mistakes, memories, heart, ache, soul, empty, shallow, shallowness, bereft, husk, night, face, pale, smile

you shove my face
into a shallow abyss
and tell me to find
the deeper meaning

i wonder what it feels like to live without worry.

is it like a flowing river, forever in motion, with nothing but the rocks to slow it down?

or is it like my childhood dog gnawing on a bone in my back porch?

to live without worry or true damage is a goal that will never be attainable.

to live a life of indifference.

i want it, i want it.