shattered
there it is...laid out before me at my feet.
a million tiny pieces...small enough
that they shouldn't hurt.
sharp enough that i know they're going to.

and when i step on them they'll drive themselves deep.
and when the pain makes it impossible to walk any further ,
i'll fall
to my hands and knees, bloodying those too on the pricks and pangs that make up this impossibly large island of pain.

i'm going to have to walk though it. the pieces glint and glare for what seems like miles.
there's no going around this.

it seems like a poor choice now...in retrospect. asking to be brought here. to an island made of smoke and mirrors, jagged rocks and elegant cactuses, as beautiful as they are dangerous.

i knew this was a place of pain. i knew that despite the siren song of its unique beauty
it could leave the ugliest of scars- if i wasn't so so careful.

one false step.
it wouldn't take much. to set off a chain reaction that would leave me alone. on an island of regrets. in a raging sea of sorrow. surrounded by fragments of what i thought was light but actually turned out to be the dullest kind of heartache...

purchased on the layaway plan. buy now, pay later.

and later.

and later still.