This is a free-verse poem, so as you will see, it has no rhyme scheme or structure. It may make it a little strange to read at first! Here I've written on my own interpretation on self-inflicted injury and harm. This is something that I, personally, have not practiced, but it's been in my life for a portion of it. It's of someone desperately attempting to ease their mental pain through physical pain in order to prevent otherwise inevitable suicide. Again, this is not of personal experience, but there are people very close to me who have, and still do, go through this very misunderstood practice.
Sacrifice
Darkness is a cancer,
for once you lose your light,
it consumes everything around you.
I stand on a thin line,
neither here nor there,
but somewhere in the middle...
undecided...
Perhaps I'm waiting,
waiting for someone
to widen the line on which I stand
so that it no longer cuts,
and I am no longer teetering.
Someone to flatten the ground
on which I stand...
balancing...
balancing with my wings stretched wide
holding me up,
wings made of crumbling marble
and blackened with soot
from the fire below
that would, too, consume me
should I ever lose my balance...
But the line on which I stand
is so thin and my support so weak.
Under my marble wings
my knees tire.
I struggle to stay upright
fighting my own mind,
my own mind begging me to give up.
Why don't I give up?
Because those fires give me light,
and despite the utter pain it gives me,
the light keeps that darkness away.
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