The Cost of Life

The cost of life creeps up and up,

a penny here, three there, every breath costs more.

I grasp despairingly at the shreds of myself

and wonder how I can find the strength to carry on.

It isn't that I don't want to, it's just that every blow

is a stroke I cannot bear, every act flays the skin

From my back

 

I lose a little more will every day,

finding it harder and harder to raise myself.

I rise in the morning and forge a weary way

through life, stumbling over obstacles in my path.

Some hand threw them there, blindfolded and uncaring,

hoping to trip the unwary, like me, the careless and the weak.

I am weak.

 

In a life so hard, where love keeps its head

hesitantly, yet firmly out of reach from my heart,

it seems as though I could crawl away and die,

leave this uncaring world and no one would miss me.

Yet some chain to life keeps me fastened here,

taking the blows which rain down day by day

My head bent against them.

 

I stagger and stumble but seldom do I fall,

instead crawling on through the years of my life.

Wish I in vain for more, when all I can really hope is

to weather these years unscathed, relatively.

It will never be better than this, will it? Never

different, always the circle of life will go on and on

 

And I within it.