Hard.

You need salve for all your wounds but the only ones offering are the ones who made them
Like a dog licking a bloody sore but putting all that bacteria back in
Why is that our instinct?
How do we heal when there is no one else offering arms of healing
There is just no way to face it by yourself
You sit in a bathtub and tears run criss cross on your cheekbones
Hoping the water will hug you in a way those broken arms can't
And you rock back and forth but that self soothing can't mend the several broken hearts your chest now seems to contain simultaneously
Repetitions of You are hard you are hard you are hard
You are too. Hard.

You feel everything but hard.
You feel endlessly breakable and pliable and torn open and mended
There is nothing about you that seems rock solid: not even the ground
And everything around you is bleeding
Spirit, soul: who even are you?

And it just echoes
How hard you are
How hard it is
How hard everyone else has had to work to look at you in the light of the morning
All you wanted was not to be alone sleeping
Not to be afraid at night
Have someone who always wanted to share a cup of coffee when you're both tired

It feels like everything, everything is ending

Why?

Why were you taught to be soft if it isn't working
Maybe all those lessons in soft were just making it harder for everyone

I don't know what I'm seeking
And I don't know if I'll ever find it
But the way this sky opens itself up to the punctures of stars I feel like nothing could ever be bigger than the moon and that hole just keeps bending, moving oceans, moving old people in nursing homes, and school children: big hard rock making everything move without meaning to...

I am sorry
I am sorry
I am sorry for the pliable aching hardness caused by everything around me
Inside I still feel like a small animal: early, still wet with the water of its mother. So soft. And small.

But

 you can break me.

Glass: hard
Rock: hard
Windows: hard
Jolly Ranchers: hard
Theoretical Physics when you are in the second grade: hard

...

Hard things break.
I can't stop breaking.