Freeing me

 

My words must be free

Although from me they originate

Birthed from the depths of me

Cast out by some cataclysm 

There is an emotion explosion

Saturating and fueling their release

Irrespective of the sensation

Joy or sorrow, pleasure or pain

Grief or delight, loss or triumph

The turbulence propels them outward

Grabbing words with power infused 

Coated with sharpened barbs 

Slashing and tearing as they go

Eager to cut to the listeners core

To share my emotional state

Striving to be free

Yet

My words refuse to be free

Thwarting my best efforts

Still tethered to my heart

Creating an emotional contagion 

Generating a symbiotic bond

Forcing me to feel the readers fire

Frustrating my need to release 

I cannot get free from my entanglement 

I feel the weight crushing me

My heart has become a bruise

I am suffocating beneath the burden

I can feel nothing, save this heat

How could words betray me so

They encompass me like a chain

Dragging me into the murky abyss

They have become my death

Then

I can feel the slightest draw

As a drowning man grasping at straws

Something is slowing my descent

Is this just the false hope before death

Merely the tightening of the chains

Like one dying from hypothermia

feeling the burning of a fire

Like one entering the darkness of the end

Seeing the brightest of lights

In these, my final moments

Have I imagined a nonexistent savior

A lifeline to save me from my pit

To free my mind from the terror

The fate I have refused to accept

Have I became my delusion

The writer damned by his words 

Again

A tug

And another

Not slowing me

Lifting me

The tether of words

The barbs of emotion

The sharing of self

Never free

Connecting me

Connecting you

Holding me

Saving me

Keeping me

My words

My tether

Freeing me

© Ron Simpson Jr. 

October 25, 2020