Vista

A landscape exists within me.
My heart is a cloud that rains upon the soil.
It spills its bitter precipitation
with little regard for the flooding that may occur.

I have no levies to stop the torrent.
I have built no dams.

I have little choice
but to accept the maelstrom
obliterating my landscape.

Every last scrap of my will is torn away,
and the pain becomes a heavy distortion of reality.
To realize that one is simply a mouse
is to understand the nature of prey.

I am the mouse in the grip of the boa, only able to observe
and experience my total and utter destruction
at the behest of her coiled emotions.
Tighter, ever tighter am I squeezed.
She is the coiled boa. I am but a small rodent in her grasp.
I feel her grip tighten, even as she draws away from me.
The wind leaves my lungs and spills across the land before me.
I fill the rugged, bitter soil with my pain. I caress the sinister blades of grass
with my despair. My inner light is growing dim, and my song is fading.
She is the coiled boa. I am but a small rodent in her grasp.
I will sing this song desperately to the battered landscape that is my soul.

No! I will shatter what is left of my old self as she slithers away.
I will gather the shards of my integrity,
and I will construct the strongest levies,
dams, walls, barricades, barriers, and floodgates
that my inner world has ever known.
I will stand the test of time.
A New Great Wall shall surround my heart.
Inside the Wall shall stand a kingdom of hope.
The livestock roaming free, the gentle breeze
jostling the branches of the trees, the fields sweeping
across the horizon in never-ending emerald.

My pain begins to fade, but still yet I feel
the bitter sting of guilt, like an ember on my skin.
She was the coiled boa. I was a small rodent.
No longer will she dominate this throne: my heart.

My hope will stand guarded by the wall around my heart.
My hope will stand feebly in the wake of a maelstrom.
My hope will not be crushed by the grip of a boa.
My hope will overthrow my pain.