Untried

It tastes like crumb cake and smells of old spice.
It sounds of pure perfection and feels of the untried.
But the way it looks, from here, I wish I couldn’t say.
It’s dark, uncertain, and underlined with pain.

The more I stare into it, the less I know myself.
There’s a woman standing there, begging for something else.
She looks like me but frightened. She sounds like me but scared.
She feels things more intensely than I ever would have dared.

I try to make her smile, to tell her it’s all right.
She shakes her head and tells me that sadness is her plight.
She tells me through a brittle glass she saves me every day,
harboring the heartache to make it go away.

— For me, she makes it clear, pushing back her tears.
It has to go somewhere, so it might as well come here.
The levity I feel has been all at her expense;
my view of life protected by her rose-colored lens.

I ask if she would leave this place. She tells me that she would.
But, she warns, with grimace set, it will do more harm than good.
Could you bear to be confronted with the truth I locked inside?
Once you know, once you feel, there’s nowhere left to hide.

The terror slithers through me, a slug of putrid grief.
I could leave her here to suffer and harden my belief
— that I am where I should be, justified and safe.
Who would choose to stay here, if they could leave this place?

I tell her that I’m grateful for her strength across these years.
This fragile wall of glass has spared me many tears.
She tells me not to pity her. She sees the world as it lives and breathes,
while I have been content to ignore the forest for the trees.

Who would want to feel pain? I ask self-righteously.
What good could come of it? What use is it to me?
She speaks no words, yet her glistening eyes captivate my being.
There is no better way to grow than the plight of feeling.

One pale hand upon the glass shatters my protection.
All those things I locked away cry for resurrection.
I curse her loudly before accepting this is my own design.
I’d been pretending all was well; pretending to be fine.

Faced with all my demons, I clatter to the ground.
I taste, I smell, I feel the longing. I’m broken by the sound.
It smells like crumb cake and old spice, like nights sat by the pool.
It hurts. It hurts. I feel it burning. Nothing feels so cruel.

My heart twists inside my chest. My eyes are overflowing.
There is no pain, there is no pain, quite like the plight of knowing.