{sad but hopeful}

Everyone wants to be heard
But no one wants to listen
We all have poems within us
Poems waiting to be unleashed
To paint the world with our hopes,
Our joys, our sorrows, our pain,
Our aspirations, and our thoughts.
We open our mouths,
Pour poems and pictures
Into deaf ears
That only want to be heard,
Deaf ears that pretend
They listen just so
They can speak again.
If you are like me,
Then we listen.
That is all.
It hurts less to be
The one doing the listening
Than the one that speaks
But is never heard.
So we listen, and observe,
Keep our experiences
To ourselves
Because there is no point
In wasting energy
On something that
Bears no fruits
So that’s all we do
We listen, and listen,
Until we are at a
Tipping point where
We have so much to share
So much to sing,
So much to paint.
But what do we paint?
Who do we paint?
At the end of the day,
All we have is ourselves
So utterly alone
In this terrible world.
What are we going to do
When the one person who
Listens to us,
Is there for us,
Is no longer there,
Can no longer be there?
What are we to do?
So, we paint ourselves,
Paint the insides of our minds
With layers and layers
Of graffiti stories
Poems and metaphors that
Eat at our personalities
That erode away our edges
And change who we are
Until, hopefully,
We become who we want to be
The best version of ourselves,
And finally, finally,
We are content.