Tin Can

Each of us, in our own little box,
Each of us, longing for fulfillment,
Each of us, trying to break away from ourselves.
Each of us, alone in this world,

I live in a tin can, locked away with all the things I’ve ever done wrong, locked away with the scariest person I’ve ever met.

Me.

I roll back and forth through time, in the blink of an eye, in the time it takes a tear to roll down my cheek, in the time it takes to break my own flesh, to control one thing, something, that which I can stake my domain over,

Lost in the dark I wander about, my map in tatters, my eyes grown dim. Where is that boy who dreamed so sweetly? Where have I chased him off too? Where has he gone?

So wondrous where the days when time went uncounted; when life was laid out before me like a golden promise and a dare. The electric kiss of youth, and all the sights left yet unseen, and all the things yet unspoken, and all the horrors I was yet blind to.

I spend my time crafting rhymes, and hiding from uncertainty. I spin a yarn, with hope to disarm, the demons that yet beckon.

I can feel the sands of time, weighing me down, breaking the back of the pack mule overburdened. Is that someone knocking at my door? Is that death tapping so fervently on my tombstone?

Or is that just my imagination, run rampant, run amok, dashing about in a dervish, besieging my every waking moment?

How do you measure failure? Is it a lack of the materialistic? Is it the quality of life? Is it a dearth of whatever things you’ve locked too far away for anyone to see, held so precious and dear that they would consume you whole in their grasping need for attainment?

Or would you measure it in the simplest equation? Judge it truthfully, and scale it against your heart.

I stare off blankly, in the dark, on so many nights; wrapped up tight as anger, wrapped up and bound to stop the shaking that I can’t seem to control. Blindly I stare, in the dark, for hours on end, and the only sight, though my eyes scan the pitch so hard, the only thing I ever see;

Myself.