Hero

Hero

Emily Clark, Author

Intangible wounds.

They exist, no one can deny it.

Drowning in the absences of hope,

We aren’t alright.

We may never be alright

 

Painted masks rest above our wounded faces.

Cloaks of diversely tinted skin lay over the tightly sewn patches

In and out,

Pull tight, repeat.

Tenacious thread holds our sanity in place.

 

No one can ever know.

Keep safe, keep them all safe.

Protect.

We’re programed to protect everyone else.

Not ourselves,

No one can save us.

We’re not worth saving.

 

No one can ever know.

We protect them.

Keep them safe from the rotting cliffs of hell

Willingly we fight for them.

As others sleep we drown in the depths of our own self loathing

They can never know.

 

Smiles plastered our faces.

Angelic eyes fade into darkness.

We walk the lonely lines of fate each night,

Teetering the edge with every sway of darkness.

 

Worthless

Pathetic

Despicable

Useless

Coward

“That’s cute,

You thought we cared.”

 

Words drown us all.

Words camouflage themselves.

Spelling maybe be different but they’re all the same,

They’re all meant to torment us,

Corrupt what little happiness we have left.  

 

The unbearable, undeniable truth is,

Though we are alone in this world,

Though we stitch our wounds,

Though we protect everyone from their own demons,

Though we accept those camouflaged words,

Though we walk the faint lines of terror each night,

Though we know no one will save us,

Though we are scarred, burned and broken,

Though we paint a smiling mask to hide the pain,

Though we are cursed with this burning hell of a fate

In the end, it will be okay.

 

That much will always be true.

I don’t know how yet,

but I will be okay.

I promised myself that.

 

We protect the underdogs,

We protect them because we see life in their hopeless eyes.

We chose to see what little hope they’ve buried in them.

Their dying flame of hope is what keeps us fighting.

 

Drawing swords,

Daggers,

Overcoming our misery to fight,

Fight hard,

Fight with passion,

Fight for them,

Give your heart,

Give it your all,

And in the end if you lose yourself,

You lost fighting for the underdog.

You died a hero.

 

A hero to the son whose father bruised his innocence,

A hero to the girl who’s bullies carved anorexic upon her bony hips.

A hero to the guy who’s branded a sissy.

A hero to the man who loathes his very heartbeat.

A hero to the son who’s drowning in grief.

A hero to the girl whose beauty was charred.

 

A hero to the little girl who can’t form the word no.

A hero to the husband who drank away the sorrow of love’s death.

A hero to the lonely mother who works four jobs.

A hero to the youthful man who fears rejection.

 

A hero to the girl who sharpens her knife at every hateful spat.

A hero to the father who couldn’t protect his angel.

A hero to the friend, losing herself to unpredictability.

A hero to the little girl blindsided by truth.

A hero to the people who abandoned hope.

A hero to the people holding on by a thread.

A hero to the people deemed worthless.

A hero to the people who were told they will never be good enough.

 

We don’t have a hero to save us,

We are the hero.

We have always been the hero.

We dig deeper and deeper

Until we find it…

 

We find our needle and thread,

Sew our intangible wounds,

Sew the camouflaged words to our cloaks of skin as tattoos.

We stand with broken bones,

Slowly ripping away the camouflage.

 

Intangible wounds.

They exist, no one can deny it.

We know they exist.

We wear our intangible wounds with pride.

They made us who we are.

They are apart of us,

Apart of our soul.

We are the protectors.

We are those intangible wounds.