My bedroom window looks out west, towards the last glow of the day and to the north lays a valley where chrome streams of cars crisscross the gleaming white concrete slashing through the wind, roaring like the sea lulling me to sleep like the tide crashing upon the sands

So many dreams shattered upon those shores but the shards and fragments I hoarded, binding them together stacking them together piece by piece mortared together by tears and vomit and blood

You don’t understand, that brokenness is who I am, who I have been for a long, long time

It is strange how the years can turn pain into concrete and sorrow into steel through wrack and ruin and disaster amid the catastrophic wreckage, the ashes and the cinders, I built this fortress In this citadel wrought from suffering, I dwell in loneliness hiding from the light and the wind

But in the end the light must shine through sunlight like cleansing fire through my barren halls and the wind softly whispering, singing a sweet, quiet song reminding me of the years of toil and dread but also the small triumphs, the minor victories the truths and wisdom won from long torturous struggle it was not for nothing, though it might not be much and life is not built whole all at once

I am building still