Kindling for the Flame

Mother, wrap me in a cool quilt patched of mostly Truth with some Lies, to keep me from freezing in the Arctic where we are all 10 cents per dozen and nothing is good or right or perfect, fighting and flying in circles, a leaking tarp to shield me from the Rain of God, the rain of my weeping eyes and soul, let me sleep forever to the sound of your beating heart.

I squeeze out oxytocin-rich tears to release the pain, stress, disappointment
from the billowing, relentless fire in my head.
How am I going to live in this world knowing what I know,
being who I am?
Whatever “Plan” they were talking about
won’t stitch its pattern on the cloth of my life.
They were all a bunch of liars
They told me that it would
(all they ever do is tell, say, proclaim on the slippery soap-Box).

I disassemble the premade pattern,
pull threads from the warm blanket of lies that they gave me
and see them disappear into the flames of the fire,
piece by piece, layer by layer,
disentangling myself from poorly tied knots,
find myself naked and freezing after they’re all burned up,
the fire has gone out,
looking for some quick fix,
warmth to stave off frostbite
and stop my lungs from crystallizing…
I must move to circulate my blood and produce heat…
I run.

No one is chasing me this Time.
Motivation dwindling as my weak muscles cramp up,
but I’ve gotta keep running as fast as I can through feet of snow, littered with the corpses that failed,
stars in black night are the light at the End.
…frantically, through tangled branches in the thicket, searching.
Searching blind for the Cabin of Henry David, but:
the Little Light Inside is now TeeVee,
and its new occupants expanded it with add-ons, a four-car garage
triumphantly proclaiming, “Progress!”

No one is going to Save Me now, I’ve got to Save Myself.

This was never for me: No Room of My Own in their blueprints.
Keep running,
releasing Dopamine and Seretonin and as I stop at the river to drink,
I see the reflection of another that isn’t me
and realize that no realization is going to
Save Me.

If I don’t want to die (which is up for debate),
I’ll start weaving
the strands of all the realizations,
twisted into threads, intricately
one at a time.
The warmth from This Quilt is all I’ll ever need,
gladly, because in the End,
I have no one but Me.