Boiling,
bitterness swells like a titanic wave
inside my broken heart.
I swallow harsh bile,
tasting the angry acid
seeping up from a churning stomach.
Fists clenched,
friction fermentates from my palms
as my knuckles whiten with stress.
I feel the tears begin to form in my tired eyes,
weeks and weeks worth of trials about to let loose
in a fury of crying and shrieking.

I shake the salty droplets aside, refusing to bend
to their weakness and defeat.
My jaw aches from the grinding state it has been
reduced to, violence emanating from every tooth.

I stand alone on a solitary mountaintop
watching a sea of roiling magma bubble and hiss
at my safe isolation.
It hungers to consume all that is good,
all that is right in this wretched world…
it threatens my now faltering serenity.

There is no escape for me,
no secure passage to another mountaintop,
no chance to scale a lonely spruce tree
for protection under its shady branches.
The magma rises, so close, to unleashing
hell on my Earth.
I lift my arms to welcome the devil himself
to walk freely among doomed mankind,
to release all havoc and pain among the naïve
and the innocents, indifferent to suffering.

The magma breaches the ledge.
I am enveloped by angry, rushing
liquid crust, feeling my blackened soul
writhe with blissful delight.
Swallowed whole, without a fight
without doubt.
I welcome the darkness, the end of all
internal strife.
I welcome the peace of nothingness
and the calm after the never-ending storm.
My chains, binding me to struggle and
scratch for every step toward success,
are snapped like wet twigs.
My feet are released from their gravitational
bounds, the weight of the world lifted
from my shoulders.

In a single instance, I am consumed.
But I am now free.