Development

I don’t know how it happened,
but when I replay it now I see
that I have always been the one
who should be blamed.
I never learned or listened when they told me to
and I will always do the things I know I shouldn’t.
I am a disaster in the center of a larger one
that I’d like to think I triggered
but in reality I’ve never made a difference.
I want to do things better
but I find myself in places I don’t want to be
where my words aren’t free, and I can’t see the end.
Just another lucky token in this big game
of pretend that never started but somehow
slowly faded in.
I’ve tried to take Polaroid pictures,
but I could never let them fully
develop before tearing them apart.
I don’t want to see what I’ve seen,
but its the only thing I know
will never leave me.
I wish starting over was the same thing
as walking down a different street
to take in all the scenery.
My dreams are never clear to me,
but hang in my mind like humidity.
I offer up my past as payment for my passage
to the future, and I know it isn’t worth a lot,
but it’s all I’ve got so I’ll spend it now
and live with what it gets me.
The greatest thieves are never caught,
but live as faces in the minds
of who they’ve taken from,
and I have just begun to recognize
my own.