13.24.13.09.16

I need not hang myself, when your sadness already enwraps
Like bloodied vines about my panting lungs.

I need not jump from a bridge, when your anger already sends
My heart plummeting into screaming freefall.

I need not drown myself, when your disregard already submerges,
My senses with self-loathing.

I need not count the wrongs I have committed, when your words already score
Tally lines into my skin.

But I am more than this. I am more than every guilty gulp of air,
More by far than a cause for anger, far greater still than the ill regard you grant me,
Harder skinned by bounds than you would suppose by the scratches upon me.

So though you daily murder me, though I fall replete and die each night,
I rise again from the ashes that drift and catch in embers at the heart of me.
I rise again, and I fight.