I see you smile. 

And I smile back. 

We all laugh at the same dumb joke,

A feeling I had forgotten. 

It almost wasn’t recognizable. 

But I sit in the backseat of the car waging war. 

That same old beast looms overhead. 

It still eats away at my conscience.

I still hear it hiss and growl. 

Whispers things

Plants weeds in my head.

Pushing through the healing sores. 

And I bleed. 

The healing spot is useless because again I bleed. 

And I return back at square one. 

Again. 

I look at the sun resting behind the passing view, 

And I think to myself “what have I become?”

I am not what I was fifteen years ago when I knew nothing of my fate. 

I never will be. 

I am not the same person each time I look in the mirror.

Those faces stare back and warp themselves. 

I don’t know my own face. 

They holler and scream at me.

 I turn away from those mirrors and reflections. 

And I tear myself apart just trying to survive each day like an animal. 

These scars hold more pain than I want to bear. 

It was an addiction to my own demise and punishment

Because somehow I deserved it. 

And I believe that. 

They still tug at my skin. 

Behind these walls I don’t understand what comes

And what goes. 

Waves of immense pain, but then burning numbness. 

Feeling everything at once, and nothing at all. 

The same hills and valleys I always knew. 

I’ve lost control long ago to banal, cyclical suffering. 

The ocean still storms, the fire still roars. 

Im either drowning or burning. 

I can’t harness its power yet. 

I almost gave in to that pain. 

Almost destroyed myself. 

Sometimes, that thought still plagues my head

And I crumple to the ground. 

Broken again. 

But even so, a single grain of indestructible hope remains as a cornerstone. 

Every time I chased after death, it whispered softly.

“Wait.”

And that little grain, how it stayed is a mystery beyond me. 

From that grain I build my temple and my weaponry. 

For the enemy, which is still myself, ironically,

Does not know of my thicker skin

Or my iron passion

Or my pure grit. 

The enemy didn’t see me fight an army of thousands with my only weapon a twig. 

And dominate. 

And as I sit in the backseat of that little white car, 

The rest of you lie unaware of the miracle occurring. 

Because that little spark isn’t dead. 

No, it grows, even if some days it wavers and quivers. 

Even on the days where I return sobbing to myself

I wipe my eyes and I get up

Over and over and over again.

And when I break, I glue those pieces together

Over and over and over again. 

For as I sit in the backseat, I brush off the debris of war, stare at my enemy with full confidence, and smile. 

“I’m back, darling.”