mantis

[prismaticbleed]

 

Oh, world, you just don't understand.

These foolish things, these transient passions and shallow pursuits... why?
Why do you force them upon me?

I do not understand you, and you do not understand me.
It frightens me, sometimes, that you and I are so very different.
The moments you find joy in chill me to the bone. Your dark-haired boys and starry-eyed girls are alien to me; a tiny anomaly, a strange sort of insect caught between your stained hands.

Let me go, please. I beg of you.

Let me be free of your expectations, your rebellions, your dogmas and your drivel.
I know you think it the best, to keep me here, whispering your laws into my frantic mind, your siren voice too harsh for my ears.
You only wish your best for me, I know.

I've met others like me, others who wish to escape, to fly.
But they do not see the strings that connect them, oh so delicately, to the mother earth on which so many have trod.
They find solace in your moments, find truth and treasure in their paper cranes and tiny flowers and kisses in the rain.

I stare on in desperation.

I don't understand. I have tried to understand.
Even your snow-topped mountains, even your vast oceans cause my limbs to shake; incomprehensible monuments that hold no sanctuary for me.
I have cowered there, ever forgiving even through my tears, ignoring the fires in my ribcage as you gently whispered, 'we will heal you yet.'

Am I that sick, that I find neither pleasure nor solace in you, world?
Am I so alien that even your rejects, your dreamers and your square pegs, look upon their brother in unfeeling sympathy, as if I were a dying fish, a deformed bird?
I do not see the same colors as you.

I have been tossed about for too long, passed from perspective to perspective, always hoping that the next hand would toss me into the sky, towards those distant lights.

Maybe I shall simply burn away in those lights.
Maybe the next welcoming hand shall simply crush me, turn my heart into dust with a simple spasm of nerves. A typical response to an unwelcome insect.
Maybe I should wait just one more day.

I do not wish to die, no. Not like this, not now.
I only feel sorrow, terror, love.


Can you see yourself, reflected in my broken-glass eyes? Is this truly you I see?
Thousands of souls, thousands of hands outstretched to me, reaching down to touch, to catch, to kill.
I ache for them all.


Oh, world, you just don't understand.