I Am Not Where I Ought To Be

Discontent.
I am eaten away by this plague of comparison.
I move my hand between my forehead and that of the latest adversary to my true joy.
If I fall short - disappointment.
If I come out ahead - disappointment.

I am exhausted by life.
This barrage of faces and needs…
…constantly checking a word, a look,
For subtlety, context, connotation...

I am weary of caring.
Of doubt.

My heart,
Though never brash,
Was once sure in those things expressed.
Now it crawls humbly before the world,
Asking meekly for permission to form any harebrained thought.

Release comes in fits and spasms;
Like the tremors of the insane.
I purge my woes unevenly on the page
And after a sad look of recognition,
They are orphaned and buried.

I toe the lines set out for me without question.
Spread thin by the old mischievous inklings to rub against the grain...

I am tired.
I am tepid.
I am slow.

My limbs hang like shackles.
My wrists betray my frailty.

Sometimes...
In sparse moments of mental clarity...
I reach out to those beauties just beyond the lines of reality...
But they have forgotten my name.
I have been too long away.

In my play at responsibility
I have replaced the urgency for truth
With the stability of compromise.

I have worked so hard to be understood.
I have sacrificed much to avoid the hurtful tone of dismissal.

But to whom will I answer to when my heavy head lies loose and unhinged...?
What goodness will be found after I have let go the last whim...?

I wish…once more…to be bold…
To speak good in haste:
Without heed to convention,
Or need of sanction.

Fear and fear and doubt and compromise...
...I am not where I ought to be.

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{{simultaneously trying to be both a better person and writer. it is no small task...}}