The Edge

A poem by Sally-Ann Hodgekiss

Is my world a lie;

Where I drift about in drug facilitated blue-sky normalcy,
Floating over mountains and crevasses on chemical wings?
Are the brilliant hues and endless, yellow wooded paths,
The filled glasses and soft promises of sunshine, smiles and hope,
A truth that only this altered, tempered version of me can perceive?
Am I just as deluded as those who swallow those ancient words
Meant to subdue and corral,
Head turned towards a glorious sky,
The promise of better blindly banishing the grit, pain and fear,
Curse-gifted with first, gasping breath?

Or am I truly broken; weak of will and soul,
My otherwise self too unbalanced to tear away a darkness synthesised from within,
And banish the illusion draped upon an otherwise welcoming world?

Or is that fraught place, that tangle of immovable and impassable, of impenetrable,
Of finite, of heavy and black and heartbreaking;
Too much, too far, too long, too hard, too painful,
Is that place of minds eye,
That hell on earth,
That cursed, aching, friable, pointless, trudging existence my truth?

But does truth matter? What is more important? An honest dirge or created melody? Which would distance chose, a step beyond the two, viewed from above or the side? If this was a tale of another, choice would banish thoughts of truth with clarity.

I choose joy. I choose potential and possibility.
I choose to tuck my crutch firmly beneath my arm…
And look forward.