Every Broken Word

 We’re sparks in the darkest hours before dawn, drawing power and attraction from another with the right hum. 33,000 people fall in love each day, but do they? Call me cynical, call me what you will but from the side lines I’m watching players march up and down the field, breath heavy, waiting for that whistle to blow. So many people scrambling with the lights on trying to find some rest before the night falls and they’re left alone in their beds recalling all the weight of life. People rushing to the alter to counterbalance the solitude with conversation, the sorrow for a face. We don’t slow dance with romance in a place where you swipe first and ask questions later. We’ve lost our warriors edge. We’re scared of the world we live in and we’re scared of ourselves. We’re scared of the dark.  We’re running from it from our youth. Every broken scene and every broken word reverberates off of the canyon walls of our hearts vacancies. We take people like pills, washing them down with a blind eye and suppressed regret. Each time we tell ourselves that it doesn’t matter, that this time will be different, that They are someone else, that we are someone else. We swallow people to patch our deeply repressed broken dreams, and they stick in our mouths. They weigh in our guts. We smile big with toothy grins that hold hope that the smile sparkles bright enough to detract from the death in our eyes.  The pupils tracing the edges of a shadows in the soul, both known and unknown. Some take people to forget. Like a drunk driver, they proudly drink them in and boisterously take to the streets honking and careening across the asphalt in celebration.  Not all of us though, no. Not for lack of desire, nor for some great steel resolved will. We hold position not to escape, but to find another that can look directly at the truth both within and without. We’re not here for some drug to deny the madness, but to laugh at the world for what it is... meeting its truest face with unblinking eyes. Knowing the cost of stillness and the value of pace, We are not like the hastily plastered vase trying so vehemently to appear new. We’re the decorative plates on display presenting the chips that tell stories of how we got cracked, transitioning value to the intangible and the truly sentimental. We’re vessels that hold water after countless earthquakes have sent us bouncing across floors or other have played ball in the house. Maybe love is an appreciation of what is,  not what is expected, Not what is extracted, not what is left over.