We Are Not Tragedies
by Kaitlyn Stocker
We are not tragedies,
just stories that have not found
a happy ending,
hiding our faces from street lamps and moonlight,
hoods obscuring all but the smoke
we puff like slow suicide.
We are not so much lost
as restless, struggling to fathom
a destination that does not feel so much
like a death to all we find Holy.
We are not doomed,
we just haven’t managed to pull ourselves
up from the wreckage
we created when we fell from grace.
And we are not hopeless,
although on certain nights
we howl from our soul-sick bellies
and sob the fading fire of our hearts.
We have not abandoned ourselves,
we are just conflicted
trying desperately to either
feel less or to feel anything at all,
waging chemical warfare against our own minds,
still children trying to recapture
the halos we burnt out so long ago
cynics wishing we remembered
how to dream.
We have not failed,
we are just growing weary
of the same mutilating fight,
seeking refuge
from our own personal raptures
in anyone’s arms but our own.
Despite our destructive natures,
we do not want to die,
we just don’t know how to live
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