Can’t Possibly Top Myself Anymore

I give up. Release me, thorn. You’ve stabbed so deeply the skins grown over and I’ve lived with you buried all this time.

A constant slight, my limp is your cadence.
Like a canine, I have run stoopid smiling forward, undaunted in my quest for enjoyment and wincing only when no one is near.
Like a surgeon, I have taken needle and scalpel and sliced in, bringing blood again, I have dissected everything inside.
Like an idiot, I have accepted myself with injury included – even going so far as to give grace for the graze.

And all this meditating and questing and educating has beget me is more of the same but with different responses.

I’m not looking for peace. I’m looking for the philosopher’s stone.

I stop midstride. I clutch something sore. I dream everything shades of grey with no country I haven’t already been and no city I care to explore because it’s all just grey and I can’t possibly top myself anymore anyway.

The scent of a lover long past, crisp forrest floor nostolgia, drifted through the air today.

I mark the end of summer.