Then, this?

I begged you to stop, to slow down at the very least, not to go through that door. Yet you pounded forward, a bull in a china cabinet. Thinking the china is unbreakable. It's not.

So when the dark part in me
Rises up
To meet the dark part in you,

it terrifies me. And it takes a little bit of my soul away. I don't recognize these shadows in battle.

And yet,
I think
if I don't protect myself, who will?

No one.

Yet I can't just sit here,
and let your darkness eat at me and make me feel
less than I am, slipping in underneath my armor, without letting you know, it's not okay. It. is. not. okay.

So I stand my ground, and roar,
a roar of independence and pain and sadness, seemingly attached to a geyser in the earth.

And when it's over, I feel no better, and still less than I am. And I wonder why do I have to protect myself? From you?

And the geyser turns to tears. And the roar never ceases to shock even myself. And I want to expose it, the dark part in me, to make it go away, to kill it at its origin. And I can't find its origin.

And then things pass, and like it never happened the mist from the geyser dissipates, and I wonder how life can be a mix of calm and beauty and

then, this?