"When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am…" –Maya Angelou
Why do we stare into the dark
When we’ve a lighted hearth behind us?
And shout our souls out to an echo
While our loved ones sit in silence?
And why does our glow of city lights
Block out all of heaven’s stars?
And why is it every unity
Divides into yours and ours?
I know all of your bad habits
I know all of your mistakes
But I only forgive
I live and just let live
It’s almost more than I can take
I know how you speak in silence
I translate every word you say
But I can’t understand
How you will not hold my hand
And how I you’ll only use and send away
Oh, what happiness can there be
When it seems my destiny
To always look to he who turns away?
I keep hoping that you’ll see
You’re the only one for me,
But I am just a thing with which to play.
I know every dark, it passes
I know that the dawn will break
But it’s one thing to know
Another to watch the show
As I’m hoping that the end is where you wake.
I know that you must be laughing
I know this is a sleep you’ll never shake
Oh, I am such a fool
But how can you be so cruel
Watching as I give my heart just to see it break?
If there is a happiness,
I’ll not find it in this;
I think perhaps it’s time I walked away.
Maybe one day you’ll miss
My constant steadfastness;
But by then I’ll have long since been on my way.
It’s one of those days:
There are flames,
There are flames…
Burning in the hollows
Where the water hasn’t touched.
Gardens, unwatered by tears,
Dry from lack of care,
Catch fire and burn;
But nobody knows…
Nobody knows,
In a world of flame,
When anyone burns.
I follow in the wake
Of those most dear to me,
Darkened by the thought
That they go on without me.
It’s strange:
When they slept before
In their small beds,
Their tiny voices
Cried for my continued existence;
For the light that sustained me
Not to go away.
But these nights?
They’re the loneliest I know:
When I’m reminded
I’m just a shadow.
It isn’t for the first time
And it won’t be for the last
That I sit here in the darkness
And I think about my past.
The things I never did;
The things I would have said;
The things I only dreamed of —
It means nothing in the end.
Because I sit here in the darkness;
In the darkness of my heart,
And you can’t light a candle
If you never even start.
Writer In Retrospect 