Mortar the bricks
Build up the fences
Taller and stronger
Better defenses…
Curl up behind
The walls you have made
Hide and be hidden
Shrink into the shade.
Bury the weakness
Cold and hard
The work leaves me weary
And always on guard.
Heaviness pulls
And twists what is true
Time tangles like string
Old fears come unglued.
Words become sharper
I close all the doors
From inside to out
Cacophony roars.
“Quiet” I tell it
It screams all the more
It tugs at my sleeves
It won’t be ignored.
The deeper I hide it
The louder it yells
I close my eyes but my ears
Feel the swell.
Doors swing open
Walls come down
Careless, unkind,
What’s been chained comes unbound.
Hurtful, malicious
What lived inside me
Is out and it’s visible
Who can see?
Questions arise
What’s right and what matters?
Actions, reactions
The mind shifts and scatters
Concedes there is nothing
That I can change
Only reorganize
Rename, rearrange.
And others are running
From what I untethered
A storm off its leash
The worst kind of weather.
Frantically chasing
What I can’t collect
Or even remember
But only suspect.
Yet something is happening
I can’t quite see
Some kindness forgives
Picks up behind me.
The same people hurt
By what lived inside me
Strangely, they gather my mess
My debris.
Fear shoves me to darkness
But friends reflect light
Shame mutes my entreaties
But friends’ prayers unite.
My walls are all gone
My fences are torn
Still—I can wonder
Is that cause to mourn?
A heart that is guarded
By an ungiving wall
Is just atrophied muscle
---No real heart at all.
I can’t mend my fences
They’re beyond repair
But maybe it’s meant
That they shouldn’t be there.
