The Flood

By Danielle Bennett

I spend a great deal of time

Preparing for what’s to come

What words will work

What to say without actually

Saying it when it comes time to be said

Saying anything

That will get me further away from the truth

The only thing I say,

Is what I think I should

I have misunderstood

My purpose ever since I can remember

It’s not that I don’t know what it means but

Just don’t know how to put it into action

Kind of like

How knowledge isn’t wisdom

There are time lapses

In between crashes

I’ve noticed before the flood gates break

There tend to be signs

Replaying conversation

Words printed in the sky

Letting self doubt disguise itself as a reality check

Leaves turning with the wind a new kind of perspective

Preparing to deal with everyone I love

Realizing they hate me

Not letting the weight of my struggles

Resonate as anything but a burden

Born by apathy, sensitivity, bitterness, passivity

Putting everything into places in which they don’t belong

I ignore these signs

Of the storm that is coming

I wait until the end

Standing in the rubble

Watching as everyone I love

Try their best to understand

The whirlpool of trouble I find myself in

My pain directed at them

A pistol pointed

Do not say the wrong thing

Do not offer me truth

Let me live inside this denial

Just one more time

No matter how many times

I say I hate the flood

We all know I can never seem to do anything

To damn it

Kind of like knowledge without wisdom

Kind of like acknowledgement without action

Kind of like

I don’t know how many times I can explain it

I don’t understand my own thinking

So how can I translate?

A poem?

A picture?

A therapist,

Tell me how you feel

Translation is Isolation to me

No matter how many times I try

The one on one conversation always ends

With myself

Disassociation from creation

Ignore every single bit of reality

That crashes into me

I drown under the weight of things

I should be willing to prevent