By: Ella Jenkins
Pain is a funny thing.
The human heart threads through itself many strings.
I suppose it’s our fault, then,
To feel attachment like one should know where or when
a flower, a picture, a few pretty phrases,
will replace focused eyes with months caught in dazes.
Yet we beg to be enticed in conflicts.
Peace doesn’t satisfy like drama from movie scripts.
Pain is a funny thing.
She prances on toes as if held up by strings.
Leaping, then… tumbling? She rocks the leg like it aches.
In a morgue of poor choices, she quietly shakes.
For a short time she lies breathless there on the marley.
Voices beg for perfection in ways thought so smartly:
when sleeping, when thinking, while brushing her teeth.
She loves pain. She can’t live without bones breaking beneath
raised heels wrapped in pale pink silk and ribbon-
though not a soul knows: all griefs must be hidden.
An angel falls from heaven; the cord snapped in pulling her weight.
She screams- blaming the sky for not blessing her fate.
She can’t go back to those comfortable days lacking purpose,
though everyone says commitment is simply not worth it.
Pain is a funny thing.
The loop goes on. Someone double-knotted the string.
People get in cars and slam on the gas.
They break phones and friendships and things made of glass.
Find any excuse to not cut the ties.
Praise is a dire, hallowed, necessity of life,
or else tortured bathroom floor breakdowns inflict mental strife.
We want it. We hate it.
We love it. Who made it?
The very next breath you take, don’t steal a curse to send above.
All the little addictions you become, are they not desperate cries for love?
Photo credit: unsplash
