Toolkit
Location
If changing who I am
Was as easily accomplished as changing the sheets
On my old and indented mattress
Then I’d wash this body with hot water and bleach
To scour away these apathetic cells
That plague my vessel
That plague my mind
With vices I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy
Who would think that apathy
A seemingly benign emotion
Could bring such ill wanted heartache on the world of men
With all the tears unshed
And all the wanted pain missing in action
I held you close that night
To try and spark the flame which I knew
Was nothing more than kindling
Able to catch fire for seconds
Just to crumble into ashes within the chambers of my heart
How I envied your pain
The sobs that fell from your mouth and soaked my arm
Were mine vicariously through you
Because when you have apathetic cells
Swarming every inch of your God forsaken existence
You find yourself wanting to cut out your core
To inspect and see if it still ticks
Like a clock without gears
Or a bike with no chain
You exist
But for what purpose? Nobody really says.
Broken people tell me all the time,
“You have to fix yourself before you can fix others,”
And yet I ask myself
In that edge of time
In that corner of space and being
With a working brain but a shattered soul,
“How can you see with that mask covering your suffering?”
It took many turns
Of the Sun and Moons eternal dance
With me, staring at a broken clock
To comprehend that there is no repair man
That can fix this gearless machine
Because I had the toolkit around my waist
And had just mistaken it as a belt
For which to keep my entirety up
Hanging by a thread
For me to sew back together when the time was right
And that time is now
This bike will one day have a chain
This clock will soon be full of shiny gears
Working hard to keep a rhythmic beat going
For me to scour these sheets
Burning my muscles with oxygen debt
And scorching my face with trial and effort
Turning every single one of these apathetic cells
Into a power house of feeling
And perhaps one of these days
With a toolkit around my waist
I may finally march out
In front of you and the realm
With a sign plastered onto my smiling lips
Painted pink and white
Saying unto the world,
“Hello, care to be fixed?”