The Valley

Fierce competition wraps it's teeth around my spirit like a lion confined within in Coliseum corridors. The choice to move is quickly slipping away between the beast's jaws and my body, but I long to suffer for something worth losing my last breath, not the temporary path that leads to the dark alley where the walkway is inviting, and my name is engraved with every step I take within the concrete . Walk, into the rainforest filled with vine twisted memories amongst giant carnivores I am naturally drawn into gazing at. Their beauty wipes the thought of the sweat on my face away, and disintegrates the stress of dealing with an expected attack by something wild, but I do not notice the poison is within the rain I'm standing in. The longer I stay, the less of you I can see, God. The deep ocean filled with neon colors must be like what sinking further down the waters of my mind feels like when I don't realize how close I am to running out of air. I hit bottom, and i crack the sea floor like a picture frame, and I shatter into the smaller, lighter, weaker images of myself. Give me air chopped up into fragments so I can section my thoughts into pockets of imagination, sow them up strong, and separate them evenly into the mouths of a younger generation already submerged underwater. Temptation to shroud vision. Ambition to overwhelm direction. Weakness to obtain strength. And stories to tell from the words you paint. I refuse to let the valley of the shadow of death to mirage itself into a self-indulgent heaven. There is too much at stake, and others who I love, to lose sight of God and spill my own blood.