Don’t coddle me.
I don’t like to be coddled.
In fact, I don’t like to be held.
I don’t like to be touched.
In fact, don’t breathe my air.
I’m coming down with something, it must be from here or there.
And please don’t try to conversant about the news like its traverse
You cannot sit at the table without a place to put it first.

Don’t coddle me like a child.
We both know we lost our way
Don’t speak to me in such numbers
Where it seems I’m not okay
Don’t twist my words or quarry
About my younger days
As if I don’t quite ponder what will become of my wicked ways

Don’t coddle if I’m so intolerable
Don’t call if the time is not just right
Don’t feed me to the world
Just to hide me from viewers sight

And grace reflects my mere impeachment
Lets not forget about my lucky stars
Don’t count them in their glory,
Then question where they are

Don’t nurture me into success just to strip it all away
Don’t treat me like a doll
Then give me of which no house to play-

In fact, you shouldn’t coddle; when heavied from all of which I’ve weeped
What use is it to coddle- when the wicked get no sleep.

-Bre Womble

The eyes that follow.
Down the hall I deeply swallow.
Is something trying to hurt me?
What are they trying to tell me?
The eyes that follow just beyond my bedroom door.
Do I dare to follow in horror?
I feel dizzy.
Quick has something stricken me?
The phantom questions that are neither seen nor heard.
I dare to question every spoken word.
Am I among the living?
What am I seeing?
Apparitions appear to me.
They are sending a message apparently.
They infiltrated my mind, body, and soul.
I used to take refuge in my home.
Now everything seems different.
Tell me who or what sent this.
My body has been taken over.
All I hear or see my system can not recover.
The eyes that follow have not released me.
Now my feet have hit the ground fleetingly.
As I try to flee.
The eyes that follow so evenly.
I have finally made it out.
The eyes that follow will they ever find out?

We are all dealing with it together
sitting on these chairs side by side.
Therapeutic Counselling; it's that  general  motion
that  lonesome melancholy
Grieving people flocking together
likened to  the  Vietnamese phrase
'Same same, but different'
And every now and then,
Someone, quiet and
unassuming will
whisper words
That strikes
a chord
In your
heart

We're no longer playing those
single notes on repeat
Blame, pain, hurt and defeat
It resonates so deeply
A whole symphony erupts
In your lost thoughts

Dvořák final moments,
Notes cascading down your face.
Eyes wild, eager and hungry for more
tears, mingled with a melody of vulnerability of the human race

Beethoven Fidelio- an operatic shuddering possession. Body breaking, mind
astrewn. Rhythm of rapidly
crushing sanity

Tchaikovsky's Sixth
white keys masquerading as happiness overlaying the sound of
sombre black keys striking suffering
and grief and everything else  in-between in the greying colours of your mind.

Music of your
stricken heart lost in
the underground,
In these chairs next to you

Woman who also grieves
With a warm embrace around your body
Our wet shoulders
Absorbing the sounds of your dying souls
Until we're playing a single courageous lullaby once more
Heal heal heal
And heal we shall

My mind hurts a lot
Simplicity looks to be my salvation
The world is so difficult
So cold hearted
At odds with itself
I think so much
What was
What is
What shall be

The future
What shall be
The light it dims each day
The toil
The loss
The few insignificant pleasures
The gamble that payed off
At the discontentment of others

The hatred boils
The society
Torn by tragedy
Stricken with grief
Forgotten
We’ve moved on.

We are at the mercy of the city, they said.
Trapped and bound, it wasn’t pretty.
We are the kids who have accomplished nothing.
The kids who lived too fast.
The kids who didn’t live at all.
Wanting to be something, facing the fall.

Laughing in the face of darkness.
Pretending to do our jobs while they drop pennies.
Here and there, bounding everywhere.
Facing the end of the map,
Opportunities landing everywhere but our laps.

Then the lights come on, at the game’s end.
The charade is over, no time left to pretend.
Pretend to be grown, happy, and alone.
Together in this land of the infinite unknown.
Cliche’d and replayed and lost in the many quotas.
Not enough going on anymore to really take note of.