Break My Bones but Never Hurt Me

Bloody black sadness drips down like long shadows.

It’s memory.

It’s madness.

It’s regret.

It’s pain.

It’s all the dreams

that lie lonely and broken

in this walking tombstone that carries my name.

Your street lies bathed in the dawning of twilight,

I call your name,

but you won’t let me in.

Though the door’s open

I cannot approach it.

I’m held back by shackles of sorrow and sin.

Worthless. Pathetic. I cry in the silence,

hurling self-epithets, wretched and wrong.

They curl about me

and swirl in the silence.

I’m the only one here to be pierced by my song.

The words settle down on me,

forming a coffin

of cold isolation

and bitter remorse.

They carved my epitaph

moment by moment,

written in bite-marks,

scarred over and coarse.

If a soul shatters alone in a forest

of onlooking tormentors gathered around

Does anyone there

who cares ‘nough to listen

hear the infinite ugliness steeped in the sound?

Is it repugnant,

that snapping staccato

I make when I come to the end of my rope?

A long fall, a short stop,

suspended,

abandoned,

broken down by their words and drained of all hope.

A square of light is thrown down on the pavement,

It feels like the sunrise,

both painful and pure.

A black silhouette

stands framed by the brightness

and gestures for me to come through the door.

Worthless. Pathetic. Destructive and dirty.

I step forward and back in a hesitant dance.

I might just bite

any hand that I’m offered,

but just at this moment, I'll give me a chance.