My Father’s Son

I want
more than anything
to be subsumed in distraction
to no longer feel the burden
of my own emptiness.

I want
more than sorrow
to feel something greater
than my own numb self.

I am
at once
absorbed in self-pity
consumed by longing
hollowed by the shrug of existence.

I, I, I.
I tire of my own pronoun,
wanting simply the strength
to shirk the robe of its embrace,
for it stifles me
more than it gives me life.

In this depression
I have so little to give
no pleasure to take.
Even masturbation
brings no reward.

To feel again
the warmth of another’s tears;
to see again
the rose in another’s cheek
as frozen winds
leave off the battering of their assault.

To shed the I enough
to hear the whimper of another’s pain;
to smell the musk of their fear,
and taste the salt of effort.

Oh, that my senses will awake again,
from the dark that obscures them,
these muddy clouds of me,
to once again permit my self
to be.

We’re on a path of our own choosing.
How wonderful to know,
stumbling on logs, and tripping on roots,
that the way is set,
not by precedent,
but by ourselves.

Oh, it is hard,
at times,
to hold that confidence,
the surety that this path is best,
among all the paths one might choose.
And yet, it need not be.

We trod our way,
veer to the side,
climb a tree,
ford a stream,
toss a stone,
smell a bloom,
stick a leaf in our hair,
not because it is best.

But merely,
we do these things,
because they are ours to choose.

Too much for words,
and yet I can’t keep silent.
Though your silent embrace,
nearly more than I can bear,
is not so much as to silence me.

In my darkest hours,
my highest flights of fancy,
my deepest falls from glory,
you are there to stand by me,
to pick me up,
dust me off,
wipe away my tears.

In your embrace,
all things melt away,
too frightening to shudder,
too immense to shirk,
too cold to shiver,
too hot to sweat.

Yet you are never too much.

Footsteps fall
on a path of leaves,
unsounding,
incongruous with the laws of the world I thought to exist.

The leaves are dry,
the footfalls plodding,
and yet…
no sound perturbs the air that I perceive.

I wonder,
is it my mind that fails to hear,
or is the world in which I dwell
so different from the one I had conceived?