Furniture On Fire

Am I that man who fails to fall after being pushed a thousand times

Am I that man who never knows what to say when the heart runs a fever

Am I that man who still stokes the fires in the belly of the furnace once it becomes a rusting skeleton

I don’t know

I sit and breathe and ache in the darkness at times

I get lost in the face of beauty I clutch at times

Breathless she leaves me

Reckless she believes in me

And today I felt hard and angelic in the curtains of a summer rain

Wondering

Who I really am

Where I am

Why these broken bones have been spared

Why these scars keep adding up

Like a deficit

Like baptism for no further purpose

And the green spaces of this heartland steam like a hot dinner

And I am found

And I am lost

And I am loved

And I am hated

I am individual yet a sum

I sit alone in the dark

And then can barely breathe in the light

Am I truly being foolish and naive

Or is everything really all right

Dare I read more minds without absolute evidence

This veil of delusion that at times cloaks me

Chokes me

I still have fear

But the edge no longer makes my stomach howl as it once did

Is it bravado

Is it guts

Merely hardness

Maybe a hallowed bow to the youth now coming up

Leaving me roadside

Like an old attraction

Maybe a metal wheel

That can no longer spin as it once did

I don’t fall so easily

I never could

But I wanted to

At times I really wanted to