Is It Better?

but I fear I never will.

Trapped in the machine, its cogs turning on, indifferent to my relief.

I run a track that only lengthens;

the finish line never an ending, only a place to keep thinking.

I no longer brace for disappointment.

My skin has thickened into leather—

words bead and slide away,

expectations strike and scatter like dust.

The optimism does not run dry;

it merely hardens me for what follows.

It saves the cloudy day for a fall evening,

when the trees have already gone bare

and the ground is gray and cold.

My breath stays held, but my faith stores deep.

I live behind a wall of glass, so frosted

that every silhouette blurs—

yet the sunlight still finds its way through.

Separate is where I remain.

A single body of hope

beside a beach of happy tourists.

I walk the tightrope between love and fear,

praying one day the tether will snap

and drop me where I was always meant to land—