Extended Hand

so fragile we are--- broken eggshells on the pavement, split ends tearing, puzzle pieces scattered all over the place with no one qualified enough to put them together, selves upon selves upon selves upon selves, questions contradicting assertions & assertions wanting to blot out any further questions, open wounds that keep bleeding no matter how hard we try to stop it with gauze, with multiple clothes, with cauterizing tools & yet, when a hand is extended, the walls go up, the barbed wire gets rolled out & the bayonets get sharpened--- the older you get the harder you get & the harder you get the more dead inside & the lack of a belief that anything remotely resembling “trust” even exists anymore, seems to greaten, not lessen, as the days go by. when the hand is extended, we want to know what the body, the heart & mind attached wants with us---we want to know the ulterior motives, we want to know why anyone would possibly throw a buoy when we are drowning, for what could the stopping of our disintegration profit them? what do they have in mind? for certainly, no one in this world does something for nothing. and this is the way we’ve been raised, this is the way our wonderful western capitalist catastrophe has carved us, us good little citizens, passing up real compassion when it is offered to us, because we can’t figure it out. what if sometimes “a cigar is just a cigar?” & a helping hand is just a helping hand.