Deja vu

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you were only ever taught to show your teeth when you smile. it never occurred that you could use them to rip skin. that lesson became your own.

fear replaced your conscience, so you used it as gasoline. you stand in the ashes and the blood. you scream at nothing and everything. the air exiting your lungs is proof that you made it.

but there is no finish line here, no trophy. no god. no paradise. only you and the whites of your eyes. your scabbed legs ache like fire and remind you that you chose to live.

what of the others?

they struggled like you did, but the choice wasn’t theirs. there is no glory in the spaces they left behind. only men find pride in tragedy.

they did not die so you could live. you felt the pain of your own rebirth. you made mortality your bitch.

survivor’s guilt will become survivor’s gangrene. you will wash the blood off, but it will always stain. calloused skin will coat your heart.

whispers around you will claim that it was only luck that saved you. but you know better. lift up your dirtied hands and laugh at how the world shudders.

it is not luck that saved you. it was you.