Is this what you need to see
The empty soul I’ve come to be
A heart collapsed to singularity
Just a black hole, ever widening
Long surpassed escape velocity
Dark stars and scars and vacancy
My steady hands detract from bloodied knees
To let thy cursory glance deceive
The chink in my armored link
Like a lurking iceberg just down-reach
That hairlines the verge of my resiliency
But what lies beneath scrapes so deep
For the lower-key, a malignancy
The worse its outcome is bound to be
And though fools turn port vacuously
I brace at starboard, bartering
Vying to salve and remedy
Via hastened, vain modalities
Sleepwalking through this fever dream
As you force the very hand that feeds
So baby, please; if not for me
Then for the You you’ll one day be
In earnest, inch backward to see
The forest for its many trees
I’ll wait patiently under fallen leaves
Should you oblige this distant plea
Left buried, turned, and withering
From pain exchanged as currency
You speaketh not without the fee
And though poignant your prosody
The trade rate compounds onto me
Whether in infancy or at fifteen
For my Achilles, you’ll always be
So dare to believe this entreaty
And more apt, you might concede
That I gave of myself, willingly
And would again, if just to esteem
A glimpse of who I raised you to be
I’d hold her hand through anything
Be the vessel for which your venom bleeds
The blanket reason for deficiency
And I would grit my teeth and turn my cheek
Through hallowed eyes and weathered feet
As target practice for your animosity
If the light from where our tunnel heeds
Was not snuffed from sight’s periphery
So if you’ll please allow to rouse and breathe
This small flicker from our mainstay creed
Then I’ll fan the flames of verity
In lockstep, wherever your path may lead