Reality

I sit here, struggling to bend the truth about my world until it fits neatly in a block of poetry, but that's not reality.

Reality is messy...
blood from cuts that don't heal,
nights with screams that don't stop,
always with extra notes that add discord to the soundtrack of my life.

Reality is what lights the match at 2 AM and sets fire to my will to survive this wreckage I call my past.

Reality is what fills me with terror at 4 AM when I think I actually will survive this wreckage I call my past.

Reality is when the mess becomes the shadows in which I live;
the poetry, the light for which I search.

My every word choreographed in this dance where I repeatedly fall down and apart.

In every line, trying to tell my story wrapped in a pretty bow, but learning that the truth wears no bow and tells itself
one cut,
one scream,
one note
at a time.

Reality's just a mess...
until a poem is born,
and then it's art.