choosing pain

Is the dance between pain and numb?

Is there no other way? Writing that

allowing that

hurting is better, less bad

than just … not.

Full stop.

Struggling to believe that

blurring the edge of unbearing

hypocrisy here every evening

howl blunting

with just one glass of wine

I'd hand you the knife

feeling that edge is important

focussed on a moment of choice

and reification

and trust in just being

through shattered promise or

sufficient reality, external

pain to balance

the dull ache

the stabbing agony

inside

31st March 2017, from a comment to Alice Smith, restructured, rewritten into a poem 12th July 2017