The quickness and authority I once moved with
Are no longer to be found.
Deliberately, now,
I must trudge through life.

Each passing year attaches more weights
Upon this bar I must lift and with,
Gravitate along.
These added burdens
Glare back from my reflection,
Beacons they make themselves,
My shameful reminder
Of a past which hath not included me.
Like a well-coveted secret this time once present,
Now faded,
Remains only in memories of those chosen to partake.

Withered from sobbing,
Agonizing pain rips apart my weary heart over my exclusion,
These woeful tears and knife-edged sword
Etch deep, barren valleys in my mind.
Each one proliferates
My existence into ruin.