I Will Always Be Broken

A. Joshua W.
2 min readOct 18, 2024

--

Photo by Erick Butler on Unsplash

From the blissful ignorant dark he emerged,

This stranger I did not know.

An alien, incognito.

Rejecting him, my path diverged

Away from where my peers would go.

While others indulged their lusts, mine hid

Beneath self-righteous self-denial.

Self-loathing soon soaked a child.

What he didn’t do and what he did

Were equally reviled.

How ironic that purity

Should leave such a putrid stain.

I sought to temper desire’s flame

Mistaking righteousness for vanity

Led by the blind to walk by the lame.

The temptations of youth, old age vilipends

With fanatical self-righteousness.

“I wanted it, though,” she consigns to confess,

Decades delayed. Innocent in no sense,

Treasured & beloved, nevertheless.

Such irrational hypocrisy-

Hating love? Feeling good is bad?

It seems intended to drive one mad.

Only ghosts still talk to me.

Together, we remember what we never had.

Whatever road we choose to take

We must pay its toll someday.

Regret what we said, or what we did not say?

The choice is always ours to make,

But we cannot choose not to pay.

While dreamers dreamed and sleepers slept,

I hoped for the hopeless, my eyes wide open.

Have I left too much unspoken?

Perhaps I must simply accept

My heart was made to be broken.

Why do I miss who I never knew?

If your heartbeat had echoed mine

Would the days still drip with time?

When the insane rule, only madmen speak truth

And innocence is the only crime.

I will always, always be broken

Because it’s the cracks that let in the light.

The only reason I now burn bright

Was because I did not know then

We only lose when we choose to fight.

--

--

A. Joshua W.
A. Joshua W.

Written by A. Joshua W.

Full-time single father of 3 sons, INFJ, HSP/empath, narc abuse survivor, former rising star in chiropractic until lies & biases destroyed my career.