Solve et Coagula

Split at the source, every thought like a fault in the frame.
Caught in refrain where the pleasure and pain feel the same.
Passion was pressure, obsession would pleasure the curse.
Turning my gift into burden instead of scaling my worth.

Predicted the past, every pattern would play on repeat.
Parsed it in fragments, distorted and called it “belief.”
Built it precise, but the price of control was a cage.
Every equation I made just erased me in stages.

Introvert energy, centered but censored, condensed.
Fire within burned but never could fully express.
Guarded and gorgeous, distorted by doubt in the lens.
Knew I was more than this war with the version I am.

No one could see it, this pressure to be what I’m not.
Push me, I pull away further, I smother the spark.
Critique only feeds the retreat until I cease and depart.
Silence is safer than hating the shape of my heart.

Fell into love like a force finally felt without fear.
Clear for a moment, then moments get stolen and disappear.
Lost it, then found it, astounded by how cycles repeat.
Even in union I’m fighting the strength of my need.

Racing uphill, willpower killing me, still I insist.
Mind of a genius but dying inside of this glitch.
Thinking in layers, I tangle the simple to something complex.
Twisting each breath into depth until there’s nothing left.

Dissolved every wall, what I called protection was pride.
Let it collapse, every mask I adapted my actions to hide.
Sat in the fracture, no capture, no pattern to patch or to spin.
Watched it break until there’s nothing but truth underneath where I’ve been.

In the ruin I ruined the rules I was using to cope.
Loosened the noose of illusion, confusion was losing its hold.
Stripped it to nothing, no structure to suffer or simulate through.
Sat in the stillness until everything false fell out of the view.

What remained wasn’t something I chose to impose.
It's what stayed when everything else was exposed,
let go of its hold and decomposed.

— Tami Jo Urban