Shards through pores

Shards, poised beneath pale skin, wield a slicing, heart-stopping potential.

Like glistening trophies amassed to memorialize years of endured pain — grains of silica grit that grind in your organs, before being melted and cast into cold smooth glass — form an inner glass layer, just beneath the skin.

Fragility in its nature, this memorial layer is demobilizing, calling for poise and etiquette, until its periodic fall into shards, only to be recast and broken again, perpetuating the pernicious cycle.

But, with progress, the shards do slowly push up through the pores, peak and drip like sweat, shattering on the cool hard surface of what calls itself ground.

I thought ground was composed of dirt, sand, grass, leaves, even… Something connected to Earth’s heartbeat. But this default asphalt winding through the wilderness claims ownership of the title and I guess that’s okay. It is modern, after all. But I certainly don’t feel grounded by it’s utility. 

Looking over my shoulder, a glistening, treacherous trail is left behind. Hundreds of shiny shards — some tiny and some large, but all the same in that while staring, only a blinding gleam bounces back.

Occasionally the strange desire arises to stop, separate from the physical self, and send a doppelganger back to relive — to revive their cold, deadly sting.

Carefully navigating the desultory path of shards, skimming and skipping across the face of once vivid memories, until landing upon the one I want to feel again, for some masochistic reason, with compulsory fingertips I reach for the slicing pain of self-affirmation.

Yes, it really was that bad..

Yes, things are better now.

Unless I were to stay here,

Captive to the reflection, manifesting another layer, a glass cell to keep my self extension both safe and anxious. The cell is impenetrable; no door nor air holes. Staying here long enough, I know the bodily self will begin to fade, the connection strained, heart beat waning. Just one shard could cut the thin line stretched between and finish the job…

From here, I can see everything. I can see everything, from here that is. But here, is the past. What good is insight, if it wastes away, stuck in passivity, Bleeding for a path backwards.

No. Break the cell, leave the shards, even if there is a satisfaction in suffocation. What good is it?

Besides, it’s not about me; none of this is for me.

It’s time to  rejoin, move forward and sweat.

Note:

You’ve got to sweat it out, and after you sweat it out, you have to resist going back to it and cutting your finger tips… You sweat as long as you’re moving forward, instead of dwelling in the past.