A Bed I Choose

Why is it easier to stay

and suffer what I know,

than wander into brighter days

and face the fear below?

Why does every comfort

I reach for in the dark

come wrapped in sharpened edges,

waiting for their mark?

I chose a bed of nails,

believing pain was all it held.

A familiar ache,

a hurt I understood too well.

But pain is patient.

It does not stay the same.

Each day another burden falls,

another stone, another name.

Weight upon weight,

regret upon regret,

stacked upon a chest

already struggling to forget.

The nails do not pierce at first.

They simply wait beneath the skin.

Silent as old memories,

certain that they’ll win.

Then comes the pressure.

Then comes the strain.

Then comes the moment

comfort and suffering become the same.

And I lie there still,

bleeding into what I know,

wondering why the road to healing

feels so much harder to go.

Perhaps because pain,

for all the wounds it leaves behind,

is a familiar prison

and freedom asks me

to leave a part of myself behind.