How did it go from me never settling for anything less
To me being the angriest person you’d meet on a workday
Because of the stress?
How did my pain become a part of someone’s reality
When the only truth I sought was the ability to stop ignoring my alarm
Because of my fragility?
How did my nightmares about failing
Involve into daydreams of bailing
On the life I know – like I didn’t build it, at all,
As if I was someone’s undeserving thrall.
I know it takes two to tango but why can’t I stop the duel
When my feet are on fire, yet numb,
But they keep adding the fuel?
I know it’s my desperation speaking when I have no time to eat
As they munch away on my future and money
But try to keep it discrete.
I know I should’ve pushed harder,
Knowing this tale is a two-parter
And I didn’t have anything to lose back then.
But it still felt like hell when the clock struck ten.
How do we pretend and keep avoiding the questioning?
It is much easier, of course, to ignore the reckoning,
But is it promising?
Have we become the jurors and prisons for our own sentencing?
The background noises are quickening, they might become deafening.
Call me when the standards are settling.
-JW
The Daily Writing of Jackie Wright 