To Myself, After 24 Total Years

Oh, such a sad thing. Your face in the dirt, your wings torn, staring endlessly upwards towards a silence that will never reach you.

Do you not feel like a pathetic thing? Of all challenges you've endured, of all affliction you have witnessed, why do you refuse to die? You are but an animal grasping for nothing, and that itself keeps you alive. A beast in the dirt. Do you not feel shame at how base you are?

A rational man would gaze downwards and close his eyes, wheezing his last breath. At least he would die with dignity. You persist, even how soiled.

You are a foul beast.

Tell me, devastated one, why do you not stand up? Why have you found your bones crushed, grinded by your ills? You, who has lived multiple lifetimes in a single, should know better.

Yet here I find you, your mouth agape, your chest hardly with breath, your skin soiled umber, but your eyes eternally entranced upwards.

How have you survived, my dear beast?