Cyclical in Nature

by Max Pelkey

Image credit: Andrea De Santis on Unsplash

I am trapped in a cycle I never wanted to be in.

Around I go,

Watching myself from afar as I fall apart.

Pieces of me dropping to the floor, down, hitting harder each time, 

falling farther than ever before. An addiction,

This battle with myself

This need to destroy my skin and bones, 

Why?

I am trapped in a cycle I never wanted to be in.

Around I go,

Watching myself from afar as I fall apart.

I pick up the pieces each time

Try to glue head to spine, hands to wrist

Put this flesh back onto my skeleton. It’s never strong enough,

Eventually, it always collapses, like the return of spring after winter.

Around I go

Again, into a cycle I was born into

The need to create and destroy are so similar, so close in proximity, it’s hard to see the difference.

Why can’t the pain be real, without me having to chisel into stone?

Why doesn’t my word mean enough?

I am trapped in a cycle I never asked to be in,

Around I go, forever and always, 

Waiting, hoping, praying

That next time I manage to attach skin to bones in a way that holds firmly, a way that means something. I am

Trapped in a cycle.

It will be written on my grave, scribed into my epitaph, a conversation point at my funeral.

How many more decades must I fight for contentment?

Is it possible?

I feel this cycle was cast upon me at conception, Following me since youth like a shadow, I am 

Trapped in a cycle I never wanted to be in.

That I pray you never get into. Watching myself each time as I scarcely avoid death,

Always dropping to the floor, nearly permanently.

This addiction inside of me, this disease that's riddled me, affects every aspect of my being. Each cycle, it gets harder to separate me from the illness. And, the hope of relief becomes smaller, now 

Only a speck.

Well, at least I have that.

I am trapped in a cycle I never wanted to be in.

Around I go,

Watching myself from afar as I fall apart. But pain inspires art, and as each cycle passes, I have too.

I’ve grown older, adapted throughout the years, and in many ways grown stronger 

still - I am trapped in a cycle I never asked to be in,

One, I was born into

Yet, one

I must learn to live with

***