Wasteland

A metaphorical narrative that seeks to shed light on what it's like to live with a debilitating mental illness.

Beneath the light of ever-fleeting Moon,
as Night's secret shade is drawn,
darkness comforts, and my tongue loosens
to spill secret desires slick and heavy as glass.

And Moon, bright now and fast fading, asks:
"What sort of grief could burden such small shoulders?
What weight exists to slowly wear away what should be --
when fears are only what never was?"
Words, said and unsaid, sail in same boat into blackness
and I am left to drown.

Sun climbs His guardtower and floods all with light
too clean, too vicious, too revealing;
no comforting delusion to abate the fears:

each day, the shadow of a lover is destroyed
and replaced with a tree, long cold and dead;
the ocean that sparkles -- Neptune's net tangled with stars --
hinting of a softer dawn atop the next wave
revealed to be a pool -- of tears or urine, I cannot say;
the flighted night bugs flitting to and fro
unmasked and are nothing but ash: lifeless, flightless
remnants of growing forests subdued by volcanoes not yet dormant.

And how then shall I lie in this wasteland only I am doomed to see?
How then shall day cleanse, how shall dawn free
the boy -- called Man -- who never learned to be
anything more than Sun revealed and necessity beseeched?
How shall I admit -- I, who's never spoken truly --
that my heart seeks something it's never known, yet recalls in memory:

to find, beneath Moon and beyond wave, another heart ready,
a true oasis, nourishment for this nomad, thirsty
for wine and entwinement, both intoxicating in their heady
richness, woody scents whispering of fulfilment and contentment, heavy
breathing masking light touches -- Even now, my face flushes,

for Moon has gone, and Sun's truth in brilliance still hurts,
and who knows if Moon -- that chance at being free -- will ever return?