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The first of autumn

As I sit in semi-darkness,
Surrounded in a tower of stone,
I wonder why,
Why I don't leave?
What holds me here?
This curse, a superstition
That if I leave my place the tower will crumble, and I will die.
A cold wind blows,
And the sun comes and goes intermittently.
I find I no longer have a mind for writing novels.
My thoughts are too quick and insubstantial.
I can't make up my mind about anything.
I turn the old myths over and over.
It's all I trust anymore.
They are all I have to explain myself.

Why don't I leave?
Why do I sit and rot?
I just sit and watch the seasons,
And from my limited position try to appreciate everything I can see through my small window.
I didn't think it would be this way.
I don't know why it is.
It seems that even once upon a time while I dreamed
That life would be so grand,
The seeds for my destruction were already firmly planted within myself.
I don't know why I believed when there was no reason to,
No evidence before my eyes of a better world than the one around me.

Wherever I go I will be alone.
I will never see understanding in another person's eyes.
That's why I stay, so lazy in my squalid environment.
What I once believed is that someone would want to hear my voice.
Now I know that no one wants to hear me.
I can't reflect other people back to themselves, because I do not love them.
I see only shallow lives filled with selfish acts.
I am embarrassed by their stupidity.
I don't know how I will ever love them enough to communicate with them.
They don't want to hear words from me.
My words hold no interest for them,
And I have no desire to speak to them.

Nothing I say will ever be simple.
I wish it could be neat and tidy.
I wish you could take a message from this like something from an antique greeting card,
Something that rhymes, very concise,
Even if not uplifting, something that reflects you,
But I don't have anything for you.
I have a mixed bag of hope, beauty, and cynicism,
Little bits and pieces I have collected over the years,
Pieces of sea glass to admire,
But they can also stab,
And that's what other people don't understand.
Why don't they understand the stabbing?
They stab me constantly and yet they are not stabbed.
My daily mission is to be a rose without a thorn,
And I do not stab,
Yet I am stabbed,
I do unto others
But they are not doing
They are not loving.

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