Fractured Crystalline Forms

You fight the current, instinct taking over, I succumb to the undertow, the depths a welcome reprieve.
Doing your best to expel the water from your lungs, I swallow the salty suffocation whole, smiling through the burn.
Maybe in the profundity, I would find a moment of quiet, instead of the thundering echoes of my deafening reticence.
Or would the darkness only amplify the stillness?
Caught up in my difference between accepting it and giving credence to the inevitable.
I’m not looking for my expiration, but if it drifted into my path, there would be hesitation in my getaway.
Eradicate this form as my mind is an iron anchor now. And it pulls me further and further under the surface, and my arms are weary now.
The enthusiasm of this reality drowned a long time ago, waiting for my resurgence.
I still carry that melancholy in raised, faint horizontal planes across my skin.
I carved into my flesh what I could not escape.
The tale of my sorrow told in braille along my bones, lacerations that will follow me into the trenches.
Eternal birthmarks on my soul, anecdotes of a time when I was too lost, and too afraid to be stronger.
These marks are my battle wounds, and my life is the war.
And this war will be won.