Withered Hearts

Each year I vowed to be better. There are nights when I pray myself to sleep dreaming of something grand I wish could pull off. Like time traveling or becoming the god of riches. I wish I could be many things. I wish for the tides to freeze. I wish for the moon to never be so blue. So I could take my steps one at a time without peril. Most of the time, I pray for the impossible. So far and wide from the depths of my desire and anger. Just to remind me that this scar on my hand wasn't so alone and bizarre.

Thus, I look at these broken things and still be calm. I read papers and books and fall asleep. I listen and laugh about something funny. I weep without end like a cycle. I replenish my faith from these bits of mercy I have given to myself. Life peeps from everything I do. By the way, I anticipate the future. On the way, I see possibilities that console my anxious heart. To become worst than my nightmares. To shrivel my fright as the expense of reforming my trails. I wish I could rewrite the stars too. So I could put every piece of warning there is to shelter me from this violence.

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Something is promising in being able to exist in your later years. My hunger for wisdom and knowledge built in memories surges within the gaps of my frail mind that I cannot help but live on. I may wither along with the forest but I will become no more of this fragile kid. I wonder in time if I would have my chances of contentment and resolution. But after all, what comes next than death? This dream... It's rather far from the surface of my sanity.

It is not some dreamy place I would wake up in. I was forced to find my purpose in this cruelty or I would be nothing more than the mice running off the pipes. What about being an adult? The uncertainty brought by this ill-fated becoming of growing up is terrifying. And painful. And empty more than ever. I am just a mere kid with ambitions so high I might fall before reaching them. But I still dream. A lot of dreams about a life worth living. About chances from failings. About being reborn with little to no mess on my clothes.

There's desperation holding both my anguish and freedom. I could hate growing up and still live to best my worst-case scenarios. I might be a despised soul but there are figures in my skin, one I call irony.

_{Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash}

And so I have this need to raise a life akin to mine. As my feet sank to the burying sands of insanity, I gathered the audacity to seek and fix. As if I am not so broken myself. Mayhap, I was made to shelter this madness—even if I am full of ugly pieces, to begin with. How will I cherish another but with bones and shards? I have thought of the world and my chances with great minds I have read in a book. Maybe, I will develop this heroic dream to help people. To become someone I have sought for years. To reach out and tell them the world isn't so desolate after all. Perhaps, hypocrisy had sheltered my desperation for years no roof could console it.

But sometimes, there's an enticing spike of agony that I pour into my blood. As a child, growing up is told in many different forms of sacrifices. Perhaps it includes pursuing a career that would cut your flesh open again. And it will be just like what was long dead and fading—Of trying to water your feet. Of trying to mend your dead skin as if a damaged branch. Of trying to breathe air like you were inside a narrow jar. All these years felt like I was trapped inside a whirlwind of pride that I thought was my way out but I am relapsing. I was here before and I'm doing it again. I was almost out and gray-empty of blood but I was still breathing. Faint, but alive. And I cannot figure out for life if that is even worthy enough.

I know I am to forget how a sunny day would ruin my scalp. I would be a mother or not. One day, I will pass onto these lonely trees and I won't notice the fall. Maybe I will be sick or worse, be lost in the harsh tick of the clock. I would forget these things and try to live in a desperate moment as if I haven't become so old. My fears? What fears me the most is merely forgetting the feeling of recognizing someone so dear and broken all at once. The fear of losing my mind in the absence of a significant connection. Have I ever told someone about myself? Have I finally had the person I could entrust my heart to?

_{Photo by ᴇᴍɪ on Unsplash}

It is such a vague yet grotesquely-made border between youth and adulthood. Like an unknown wall or ending. Without ever assurance in merely disappearing of age or existing over and over again. I have attempted to enumerate how life appears to me and not. About looking out for most of what fears dwell in me. About fostering a mind so deteriorated. About being a child and into a world full of scary things that either cut your slumber or never at all.

It all ends in a lone wonder time could only consume. I doubt I will ever have the courage to exist for so long. Let alone tell a story about something that one day I could be recognized for. If I am to forget things as humans do, who would hear me?