War

I wake up with a war under my breath

Before my feet hit the ground.

“Fight,” shrieks one voice.

“What’s the point?” hisses the other.

I am the spark that catches fire,

The rain on burning embers,

The prisoner fumbling with the lock

Of their own chains.

I am the saint dressed in borrowed white,

The sinner still whispering their own name.

Hook left. Hook right.

Every reflection is a booked appointment,

For another match between ourselves.

One half yearns for the daylight;

The other is irrevocably lost to the night.

I don my smile like hammered silver,

Smooth and bright to mask the fissures deep beneath.

An eruption of applause above my head,

A rumbling of collapse underfoot.

So tell me, of my two halves... which do I show them?

I erect myself, carefully brick by careful brick,

Then smash it down just as fast.

I stitch my wounds with shaky fingers,

And claw the stitches back out when healed.

I am both the medicine and the irritation that cannot be sated.

My brain is a court without the bailiff.

Each decision rendered laced with ill will.

“Guilty!” roars one. “Innocent!” cries another.

Neither ever seems to go away.

“You are meant for the stars,” intones one voice.

“A phony,” sneers the other, spitting on the floor.

And so I stand, suspended between them,

My fists already slick with blood,

Grappling with which of these two charlatans to believe.

I’ve sunk into oceans I myself had conjured up.

I’ve cried for help to absolutely no one but myself.

I have held the key to my own dungeon.

I have been my own plunderer.

I’ve pilfered joy and interred sorrow.

But hear this.

Perhaps the war was never meant for victory

Perhaps courage is simply allowing the war to rage.

Not elevating one voice to rule over the other,

Not demanding submission, but recognising the indelible reality of even the most fractured wounds.

And if you find yourself smiling,

Understand that it did not cost me a penny.

It was bought with the blood, sweat, and tears shed on the battlefield within my soul,

That I and my various manifestations could coexist.

And every morning,

The clarion bell tolls for the match inside my chest.

And my two selves step into the arena once again.

And miraculously... somehow...

Bruised, drained, gasping for air...

I choose the side of the soldier

Who has not given up on defending me.