Reckoning

It’s time to finally live or die
you’re twenty five and everyone
is waiting just to hear from you.
The ceiling is so much higher
than you thought it was,
but looking up has never been
your strong suit.

Outside you see a line of them
approaching you
from a distance like their presence
is a force beyond their silhouettes
against the setting sun.
The mole that has been digging up
the field stops its work for a moment,
when it hears the slightest shuffle
of their footsteps getting closer every second.

Sometimes nightmares have a way
of coming back to you,
but only in the midst of other things.
Like the birds she kept locked up
inside her room, where she would cut out
all the feathers that could fly.
This happened every time they grew
but those desperate flocks could not pretend
that everything was fine without the sky.

So you greet them when they find their ground
to stand on, with their hands on all the triggers
that have never once been pulled before this moment.
You don’t give any reasons, but explain how it is best
to end things here where it is quiet and the grass
is dead in just the perfect way.
They reply as a group in one unison voice,
that clashes between the individuals combined
into a whole, and let you know that you aren’t
getting out of this one.

A fight is just more talking
without concealing all the extra weight that shows
with every word, and at the end of it
you’re standing there with daylight
through your body.
Although, that’s nothing when compared
to them who’ve all collapsed into a pile
of their insides pouring out
and still the evening now is ruined
but tomorrow and the next have
all been justified.