I'll Keep The Thorns - Book of Poems

Chapter 1 - Hurt - Merry go round

Merry go round

It starts slow.
The wheel in motion.
As if we invented the wheel.
As if this is our first rodeo.

This first time we have been thrown off the rampant machine that rejected us for the more fitting ride of the merry go round.

The colour are all in a swirl, starting at a gentle pace, convincing us both that we could really be going somewhere.
The child like innocence that believes the horses here are real.
The teenage dream that anything is possible!

In the blink of an eye the ride has sped up!The momentum of euphoria building, rapidly becoming excitement!
Making us feel like we could actually fly as long as we are on this ride together!

Everything around us becomes a blur, all I can see is you, all you can see is me. We maintain eye contact as if our lives depend on it. That life line, that cord that tethers us, that steady spot where we can focus on to, to know that we are safe.

Time passes, nothing around us is moving forward, the faces stay the same, the environment stays the same. As this ride we are on is nothing but an illusion of movement, a pipe dream of progress.
We try to maintain eye contact, but it's getting too hard to see. Too hard to see clearly.

Nothing changes, it all just stays the same, like stagnant water in a dead pond where nothing can thrive, or grow, apart from the mould that feeds the death and decay.

We lose eye contact completely now.
This seemingly small insignificant gesture slows the ride down.
Until it halts.
Stutters to a stop.
This time you get off first, dizzy but steady enough on your feet to walk away with a stride that holds meaning, a stride that holds purpose.

Somehow in the spiralling of merry go round, the cycle of pain, the cycle of grief, the cycle of pure illusion you have maintained your balance. I watch walk away, you don't wait, you don't look back.

Meanwhile I am reluctant to get off the plastic horse I am on. As though the familiarity, of the way my form moulds to the shape of the once comfortable brightly coloured seat has provided some stability.
But it's just fear keeping me here.

I sit until I realise that plastic doesn't nourish, plastic doesn't grow in nature, plastic doesn't feed or heal or help.
The "stability" it once provided me was stifling me. Like a plastic bag around my head, like plastic can holders around the neck of a bird.

I'm not happy here. No authentic beauty & growth can not come from the myth of artificial recycling.

For a repetitive cycle is all it was, a stuttering, faulty, illusion of a cycle that came with cloaks and daggers.
Smoke and mirrors, flashes of blinding light hiding the man behind the curtain. Allowing myself to be tricked into following that yellow brick road which was was simply quick sand.

So I began to sink, you had long gone & although in that moment I thought I needed you, the need caused me to struggle.
Until I remembered in quick sand the more you struggle the deeper, and faster you sink.

So now I let the myself respond with soul, with heart, I breathe. I wait, I visualise myself rising. Until I begin to feel the familiar hand reach for mine. Gently at first, until the hand begins to heave me up, as I rise....
I rise with a firm solid grip on the hand that I know so well.

The pull of a thousand ancestors that came before me. The pull of loved ones beyond the veil. The pull of knowing that quicksand cannot hold me.

The pull of knowing I can leave whenever I want. So I remember don't struggle, don't fret mon ami. Don't fight it, you will sink faster, and we, we are meant fly.