From Brick to Glass

How much water

can you fill a glass

before it spills over?

How much air

can you fill a balloon

before it pops?

How many items

can you fit in a bag

before they fall?

How much pain

can you give a person

before they break?

Each day filled with motions

trudging through the valley of hopeless dreams

to aspire some kind of greatness

not meant for me.

At days end

when I recollect at night

I forget the date

All have looked the same to me.

If my existence does have relevance

Who is it relevant for?

The mother,

The father,

Too much else to worry about.

The brother,

Confused and lost,

Diseased from the Devil's poisoned lettuce.

The grandmother,

The grandfather,

All else is abhorrent but they.

The uncle,

The aunt,

Only want misery as company.

No friend knows me,

Not even my name.

What didn't kill me,

Never made me stronger

It filled my heart with emptiness.

Late hours of the night,

Became early hours into the morning

Wide open eyes searching deep inside

To give me a reason to finally cry.

I know now why they say,

You can get addicted

To a certain kind of sadness;

Because I'd rather feel something

Than feel nothing at all.

How does one leave their comfort zone

If sadness is all I’ve ever known?

Possibly the emptiness is a result

of the prolonged sadness

Who overtook me at the crucial years

The first five

The next 10

The next five all over again.

The boy, the clink, the hand, the knife, the brain

All took new meanings for me.

But they say,

One does not know loss

If they know not of gain;

And one does not know pain

If they know not of pleasure.

I've been told I cannot be sad

For there are hungry children

Dying in Africa,

And women being killed

In Saudia Arabia,

And of the Jews who were murdered,

In Nazi Germany;

And the kids who have cancer,

Excited to breathe another day.

Then I wonder if,

If i were happy

Would I be told I cannot be happy,

Because there are those much richer?

But no one was ever told

of the girl who cried please!

for someone to tell another

That there is a girl out there

With a dying heart

Trapped inside a subsisting prison

Waiting to matter.

The world has seven billion people.

How can one have so much company

Yet still feel all alone?

These surreptitious thoughts,

These clandestine emotions,

Hidden with a comedy persona

So that maybe one day

Euphrosyne would be proud of me.

There have been some

Who thought they were mechanics;

Gave me duct tape and super glue.

And I was their project

Failed too many times

Sent to the junkyard.

Because who can love a girl

who does not love herself?

I told them

to crumple a piece of paper

and apologize to it.

I asked if it were still crumpled

They said yes.

Now the paper is forever useless

Because “sorry” did not fix it.

What was once broken,

Will always have been broken.

Each day is a tiptoe through a field

Some walk on grass and flowers

Others on spikes and bear traps.

Two kinds of people

All running to the same place,

Leaving what is now behind them

All wanting to swim

Among winsome broken pieces of sea glass

With piercing sharp blade edges.

And if we all exist

In a sea full of life

Of which we throw rocks into

That sink to the very bottom

Then I, too

Am sinking.

Slowly

Painfully

Impotently,

Drowning.