Side Steps Tomorrow
Content Note: Caregiving exhaustion, loss of autonomy, silenced distress, and suicidal ideation.
It’s not really fair
for the one who stays—
living in fear of defeat,
whose choices are swept away
by another’s single choice,
by a single self.
It’s not really fear
that keeps one near
to the One
whose freedom is strangled
by tendons not tender.
It’s not really tears
that tear one apart,
while rage rallies beneath
a veneer of endless courtesy—
and no one hears,
no one cares to see
tears turn
into fragments
of a glassy façade.
It’s not really reasonable
when one can’t appear
to not want to be here,
can’t stand to sit here,
while others over there
admire the choice—
because they don’t
have to be here.
It’s not really real
to dare say how one feels,
for fear of dull thuds
from sharp judges’
mental mallets.
It’s not really just
when lines so fine
keep one wrong or right
exactly
where they want them.
It’s not really good
when one lonely one
sidesteps tomorrow
just to stop feeling.
Sorry.
