Poem: A Prayer For Happiness (2014)

I wrote this poem to possibly include in my novel The Freshman I am writing. I channeled my inner Sylvia Plath for this one.

A Prayer For Happiness

by

Raymond Tyler

My world is darkness...a cancer slowly gnawing at my soul. Curled up in a corner, my last thoughts are of what could have been.

Why me? I cry a thousand times. Knives mince my soul with the promise of a happier night. 

Black roses for me, I can smell their putrid waft floating across the hot summer evening's air. 

My insides are rotten and my core is gone. All that is left is this mechanical skin that goes through its damning daily motions. 

I turn my shoulder to look behind. Broken debris is all that I see left in the wake of my path. 

Should I move forward and take a chance of crushing all that is dear to me? 

Where is my balm to mend my wretched soul? Where is the happiness that I once knew? Will I ever see light again? Will I ever feel the warmth of the sun heating my frigid skin; perhaps melting the ice inside whose frozen mire has trapped me forever. I want to swim in the sunlight and bathe in forgotten memories of the happiness that I once knew. 

Why is my happiness so fleeting? Why can't I grasp it my hand and then infuse it in my heart? Maybe then I might have a moment of peace. But, would it last? Would it just be a mirage sliding though my fingers and then flutter away like a bird into the night?

11 November 2014