Poetry

YOU
By Hagop Ahrens

You speak to yourself in this manner. You were confused that denomination was
elective. You defined yourself by your deficiencies. An ample breath of room to float in.
The lack fed your need from without. A way in which you found yourself unable to
commit. You hid behind the word almost. As if your true intentions were unbeknownst to
you. You needed someone to confide in. Unable to trust the self, you resorted to the
opinions of others to generate trust. In a sea of flappable intentions, you created your
own storm. You had never even built a raft and wondered where the tumult came from.
In a merry dispossession, you bound yourself to an unadulterated naivety. How could
you have known, if you had never tried to understand?
The rules of others came as an imposition to your being. You were always
fascinated by the ability to limit another. You never understood why take upon such
frivolous carnage? You never stopped to observe how you had limited yourself in your
inertia. You knew it stood in your path, an unidentifiable one. A blurry figure whose face
you never saw because you always turned away before it became too clear. You
seeked remuneration for this injustice by endlessly alleviating yourself from your
hardship. Ready to celebrate the victory of your surrender before the war had started. In
this pattern you found yourself at a loss.
You began to define yourself by these patterns. You were always one to blank.
And you meant that literally, you snarky scoundrel. With a preposition a sentence does
not start. Yet the rules are broken to be. In this quest to discover the concoction that
would finally quench your never ending thirst you stumbled upon a realization.

You had always defined yourself by properties you believed unchangeable. A
merit to which you were born and had to learn how to circumvent. Not once did it occur
to you that you had any ability to imprint these qualities on yourself through practice.
You found it easy to defer the impact others had on you, yet never did you consider the
lulling song you had been singing this whole time. A recognizing glance and the music
stopped.
You found yourself in an unrelenting stillness. A vibrating muscle which yawns for
action awakened within you. You saw opportunity for the first time. You did not concede
to the notion that you either did not know or care. You found this glimmer of hope was
quickly swept away by the gargantuan nature of the undertaking. You had been happily
digging down so long, you did not catch a shaft of light. The misplaced dirt had only
made the escape more demanding of your rigor. Without recompense you drove your
fingers into the walls until your nails bled. The brevity of your success as you reached
the surface hit you like a cold steel blade. A quest out of the abyss – an unburrowing of
the soul sequestered.
Now a mountain lays before you and you set yourself to climb it.