I avoid confrontations

because I’m afraid

They will leave or abandon me.

I have been taught this

with improbable diligence

I may be physically harmed

emotionally marred

or a segment of me killed

by the innate sense that I am wrong

to exist or be or live or think

or speak my truth

It’s what hurls me away from

Confrontations

It hurts my heart to watch the news.

It makes me feel very alone.

The Grief is a place I live

where the walls are papered with used tissues and broken hearts.

It’s not my favorite place,

but it functions as a place to rest

with the heaviness that the world insists I pay attention to.

It is incomprehensible that as each year passes,

life reels forward

whether regretted or not

Whether embracing joy wholeheartedly,

or rejecting neglected needs to prove an unobtrusive being,

reborn time after time as the clock hands race onward.

Each life lived scattered on the zephyr’s of sheer will

violent and fierce as those who rejected tradition

Legend divulged through personal narrative

is fiery bursts, luminous ashes, remnants of destructive lava floes

Carnage solidifying into veins of valiant courage

a raging vocalization of injustice personified

tempered by the light of love