If Only

Our pain is so duly placed in structures that we know are hurting us and those we love.
We’re so sure our pain can be cured, if just this changed, or that.
We encounter a person working towards the same goal as us and we don’t see it. Instead, we demonize them because of their different solutions. We separate ourselves from them. Believing them to be other than what we are.
The pain is so exquisite and we have no idea why nothing fills the void we feel.
We want for clarity, sureness, and stability.
Our answers are so clear, if only people saw what we saw or knew what we knew.
We claim to be strong, to understand, to know, but down deep we still question…
The void pulls at us and we don’t dare look, for fear of what we might see.
The quiet is so painful that it’s deafening screech is desperately drowned out with anything.
Anything that will distract us.
Our books and dogs, our phones and our gods.
This is how we flee.
Emptiness abated.