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Orbital Lens
Each word breathed is lined with petty arsenic,
the escape accompanied by a sharp and coursing pain.
You contain them and grow ill as days pass
until you collapse into the hole you have become.
Some people have your antidote at hand,
for better or worse, they are who you rely on.
One of them will fail you, maybe two,
and you'll never be able to forget how close you came to death.
Then mankind prevails you, and you survive.
Against your very fondest dreams, you wake to new day.
You lie in a pile of bedding and bones, lost
and somehow unhappy, somehow confused, and so tired.
You've moved along to new places and things;
yet everything's familiar and uninteresting, all of the time.
Everyone sees this light, pointing somewhere true,
and for some reason all you see is dark, blurry shadows.
You continue walking because it's probably what's best.
As you go, you'll probably find something or somebody good.
You might ignore it, overlook it, maybe even step on it;
but it'll have been there at one point or another.
Then you start to change again,
against your better judgment and your own desire.
Then you start to lose perspective,
just to grow it in another garden, somewhere close.
You never were an orbital lens.
