Dillon Cain | + Follow Poet |
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A Lonesome Catharsis

He never questioned the weight behind his eyes until the day he finally woke up. For as long as he could remember, the mud had been a part of him. A thick, caked crust beneath his skin that hardened with each passing year. He believed everyone carried the same layer, worn like a second skin, unnoticed and unchallenged. It wasn’t until it cracked that he realized he’d been blind. The fissures began in his stone-cold gaze, tiny cracks etching across the dam he didn’t know he’d built. Leaking droplets of water quickly made way for a torrential cascade that swept through years of sorrow he’d never dared name. The boy wept, and in the raw violence of that moment, it felt as if his darkest thoughts were being pulled from him, siphoned through the saltwater droplets trickling down his face. His visage, once a mask of stone, began to soften. The weeping water traced the tired lines of his skin, wearing down the hardened edges of him, like a river reshaping the earth. His body began to ache as the muddy scaffolding that had once held his body together began to crumble before his freshly-awakened eyes. He collapsed onto the hardwood floor, his body folding in on itself as if the weight of years had finally become unbearable. In that instant, he shattered into a thousand fractured pieces. He lay there, resembling broken glass strewn across polished wood: sharp, glinting, and impossibly delicate. And in the stillness, he waited. But no voice called his name, no hand reached for the scattered pieces. He was whole in his breaking, and utterly alone in his becoming. 

Sweep me away in my eternal estrangement,
A catharsis can’t save me anymore.
What’s the use of emotional arrangement,
When you have nobody to call for.

Copyright © Dillon Cain | Year Posted 2025

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