Hamartia

Ah, my Achille's heel
liquid gold
It goes down so smooth
leaves so little to remember
But there are ugly days
where I try to pull back
and I fall flat
Stale beer and one cigarette
rusty nails inside my head
Loud voices and bright lights
pounding headache
Can't recall my middle name
was it "trouble" or was it "useless"?
I settle on "fuckup" when they ask
Mugshot, moneyshot
It all feels the same
Humiliating
It lands you in the same place
a cold cell, within yourself
I can't blame it
I fall back into it
every day I think of it
and every night I dream of it
Yes, my fatal flaw
It will kill me

You

Yes, I see you
peeking through your lashes
Yes, I hear you
your lips move and I can
feel you
quiet laughter like
fingers on my spine
I watch you and I think:
I know you
The curve of your cheek
color of your hair
so much like mine
You have a look in your eye
that is hard to define
It says:
Yes, I see you
and
Yes, I hear you
and
I wish I did not know you

Tree

A single tree's pale fingers
stretch towards the light
I am with them
Leaves pierce and flourish
I grow for a time
But when buds begin to pinprick
my arms turn inward
The flowers spring forth and bear fruit
I shrivel and my eyes flash
My mouth begins to speak
and blackness pours out
My inner tree lies dormant
until the cycle begins again

The Wall

Peering through my lashes at those around me, hands clasped, silent. As lonely as they come, and about as adrift as one can get while surrounded by people who know you, but don't really know you. It's a two way street. But it wasn't always. I remember the days when the walls were first being imagined, when the mortar hadn't even been mixed yet.
I had no words then that could change the shape or nature of the roads we would later walk, purposefully and with a hint of resignation and defeat. I had no way of knowing what the height and breadth of this wall of disgust would eventually blossom into. But I felt the first creeping sensation of fear, and over time I learned what it is to be despised -- to be surrounded by those who vomit words that crawl into your brain, slither along your spine, and drop one by one, like stones, into the pit of your stomach. And then they take the resounding silence that their word-stones created, and they fill it with their walls.
After all this time, it would take a voice like thunder to pierce such a veil. Am I strong enough? Will a single planted seed be enough to spider-web through the mortar, to break it over time? Or must I rise up with all the anger of Poseidon, a thousand tsunamis at my back?

Bitterness

My shame gnaws at me like a famished thing. I've felt it swallowing me throughout the years: consuming me and eroding me. How to run from a bitterness turned from others and thus unto myself? How to forgive amid the loathing and despair? Weak, I was. Always weak, and much like a famished thing myself. I didn't have the strength  to tell the truth, blinded as I was by fear and confusion.
Ah, I hated them; I hated them for the way they looked at me, when I knew the things that I did at the time. I despised the injustice sealed away -- this filthy little secret-- behind closed doors.
But wasn't I the one who truly faltered? Throat closing up rapidly, tears running rampant down my despairing face; I ran from those eyes with a false confession on my lips. Perhaps the truth wouldn't have been so hard to believe if I had actually told it. I simply hadn't been strong enough. And at night, I cried over my own failure. I was only a child, but I prayed that I could die in my sleep and be reborn. I wanted to be anyone, anything, other than myself. I prayed that the person that I was would die.
I never wanted to feel those eyes that smoldered with rebuke saying, "Tell the truth!"
The truth was always first on my tongue, only to be twisted and vomited back out as the lie.
THE LIE.
Why did I lie to them? Why did I let them conquer me and manipulate me into telling them the lie that they so wanted to hear? How could I betray myself so horribly?
Ah, I may be far, far from perfect now, but I was very close to it then. I only wanted them to love me, to keep me. But I was too weak, and in my weakness I destroyed my chance to be loved, and I am close to being cast away and forgotten by them, with relief on their part.
I am so bitter. How could I have been so weak?